PARADISE FOUND
THE CRADLE OF THE HUMAN RACE AT
THE NORTH POLE
DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE TRUE KEY TO ANCIENT COSMOLOGY AND
MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY.
Compare p. 479.
A. The Northern celestial Pole in the zenith.
A B. The axis of the heavens in perpendicular position.
C D. The axis of the Earth in perpendicular position.
I I I I. The abode of the supreme God, or gods.
2, 3, 4. Europe, Asia, and the known portion of Africa.
555. The Earth-surrounding equatorial Ocean-river.
666. The abode of disembodied human souls.
7777. The abode of demons.
C. Location of submerged Eden.
C A. " The Strength of the Hill of Sion."
LRADISE FOUND
THE CRADLE OF THE HUMAN RACE AT
THE NORTH POLE
A Study of the Prehistoric World
BY
WILLIAM R WARREN, S.T.D.,LL.D.
PRESIDENT OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY, CORPORATE MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ORIEN
TAL SOCIETY, AUTHOR OF " ANFANGSGRUNDE DER LOGIK," " EINLEITUNG IN
DIE SYSTEMATISCHE THBOLOGIE," " THE TRUE KEY TO ANCIENT
COSMOLOGY AND MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY," ETC., ETC.
WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS
SIXTH EDITION
BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
«##, Camfcri&ge
1885
Copyright, 1885,
BY WILLIAM F. WARREN.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge :
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
WITH FRIENDLY PERMISSION,
TO
PROFESSOR F. MAX MULLER,
OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
PREFACE.
THIS book is not the work of a dreamer. Neither
has it proceeded from a love of learned paradox.
Nor yet is it a cunningly devised fable aimed at
particular tendencies in current science, philosophy,
or religion. It is a thoroughly serious and sincere
attempt to present what is to the author's mind
the true and final solution of one of the greatest
and most fascinating of all problems connected
with the history of mankind.
That this true solution has not been furnished
before is not strange. The suggestion that primi
tive Eden was at the Arctic Pole seems at first
sight the most incredible of all wild and willful
paradoxes. And it is only within the lifetime of
our own generation that the progress of geological
discovery has relieved the hypothesis of fatal ante
cedent improbability. Moreover, when one consid
ers the enormous variety and breadth of the fields
from which its evidences of truth must be derived ;
when one remembers how recent are those com
parative sciences on whose results the argument
must chiefly depend ; when one observes that many
of the most striking of our alleged proofs, both in
Viii PREFACE.
the physical and in the anthropological domain,
are precisely the latest of the conclusions of these
most modern of all sciences, — it is easy to see that
a generation ago the demonstration here attempted
could not have been given. Even five years ago
some of the most interesting and cogent of our
arguments would as yet have been lacking.
The interest which has so long invested our
problem, and which has prompted so many at
tempts to solve it, was never greater than to-day.
The lapse of centuries has rendered many another
question antiquated, but not this. On the con
trary, the more the modern world has advanced in
new knowledge, the more exigent has grown the
necessity of finding a valid solution. Men are feel
ing as never before that until the starting-point of
human history can be determined, the historian,
the archaeologist, and the paleontological anthro
pologist are all working in the dark. It is seen
that without this desideratum the ethnologist, the
philologist, the mythographer, the theologian, the
sociologist can none of them construct anything
not liable to profound modification, if not to utter
overthrow, the moment any new light shall be
thrown upon the mother-region and the prehistoric
movements of the human race. Every anthropolog
ical science, therefore, and every science related to
anthropology, seems at the present moment to be
standing in a state of dubitant expectancy, will
ing to work a little tentatively, but conscious of
PREFACE. ix
its destitution of the needful primal datum, and
conscious of its consequent lack of a valid struc
tural law.
To the believer in Revelation, or even in the
most ancient and venerable Ethnic Traditions, the
volume here presented will be found to possess un
common interest. For many years the public mind
has been schooled in a narrow naturalism, which
has in its world-view as little room for the ex
traordinary as it has for the supernatural. Decade
after decade the representatives of this teaching
have been measuring the natural phenomena of
every age and of every place by the petty measur
ing rod of their own local and temporary experience.
So long and so successfully have they dogmatized
on the constancy of Nature's laws and the uniform
ity of Nature's forces that of late it has required
no small degree of courage to enable an intelligent
man to stand up in the face of his generation and
avow his personal faith in the early existence of
men of gigantic stature and of almost millenarian
longevity. Especially have clergymen and Chris
tian teachers and writers upon Biblical history
been embarrassed by the popular incredulity on
these subjects, and not infrequently by a conscious
ness that this incredulity was in some measure
shared by themselves. To all such, and indeed
to all the broader minded among the naturalists
themselves, a new philosophy of primeval history -
a philosophy which for all the alleged extraordinary
X PREFACE.
effects provides the adequate extraordinary causes
— cannot fail to prove most welcome.
The execution of the plan of the book is by no
means all that the author could desire. To the
elaboration of so vast an argument, the materials
for which must be gleaned from every possible field
of knowledge, the broadest and profoundest scholar
might well devote the undistracted labor of a life
time. To the writer, loaded with the cares of a
laborious executive office, there were lacking both
the leisure and the equipment otherwise attainable
for so high a task. The best he could do was to
turn one or two summer vacations into work-time
and give the result to the world. Of the correct
ness of his position he has no doubt, and of the
preparedness of the scientific world to accept it he
is also confident.
To the foregoing remarks it may be proper to add
that apart from its immediate purpose the book has
interest, and, it is hoped, value as a contribution to
the infant science of Comparative Mythology. By
the application of the author's " True Key to An
cient Cosmology and Mythical Geography," it has
been possible to adjust and interpret a great va
riety of ancient cosmological and geographical no
tions never before understood by modern scholars.
For example, the origin and significance of the
Chinvat Bridge are here for the first time explained.
The indication of the polocentric character com
mon to the mythical systems of sacred geography
PREFACE. XI
among all ancient peoples will probably be new to
every reader. The new light thrown upon such
questions as those relating to the direction of the
Sacred Quarter, the location of the Abode of the
Dead, the character and position of the Cosmical
Tree, the course of the backward-flowing Ocean-
river, the correlation of the " Navels " of Earth and
Heaven, — not to enumerate other points, — can
hardly fail to attract the lively attention of all stu
dents and teachers of ancient mythology and myth
ical geography.
To teachers of Homer the fresh contributions to
ward a right understanding of Homeric cosmology
are sure to prove of value. And if, in the end, trie
work may only lead to a systematic and intelligent
teaching of the long neglected, but most important
science of ancient cosmology and mythical geog
raphy in all reputable universities and classical
schools, it will surely not have been written in vain.
That the author has escaped all errors and over
sights while ranging through so numerous and such
diverse fields of investigation, many of which are
but just opened to the pioneering specialist, is too
much to expect. He only asks that any such blem
ishes which a more competent scholarship may de
tect, or which the progress of new learning may
yet bring to light, may not be allowed to prejudice
the force of true arguments, but may be pointed out
in the spirit of a candid and helpful criticism.
In conclusion, the author respectfully commits
Xii PREFACE.
his work to all truth-seeking spirits, — not less to
the patient investigators of nature than to the stu
dents of history, of literature, and of religion. Par
ticularly would he commend it to all those yearning
and waiting Konigssohnen whose experience has
been described by Hans Andersen in the words,
" Es war einmal ein Konigssohn ; Niemand hatte so
viele und schb'ne Bucher wie er ; Alles, was in dieser
Welt geschehen, konnte er darin lesen, und die Ab-
bildungen in prachtigen Kupferstichen erblicken.
Von jedem Volke und jedem Lande konnte er
Auskunft erhalten ; aber wo der Garten des Para-
dieses zu finden sei, davon stand kein Wort darin ;
und der, gerade der war es, an dem er am meisten
W. F. W.
BOSTON.
1 The same, being interpreted, read as follows : " Once upon a
time there was a king's son ; nobody had so many and such beau
tiful books as he. In these all that had ever happened in the world
he could read and see depicted in splendid engravings. Of every
people and of every land could he get information, but as to where
the Garden of Eden was, — not a word was to be found therein ;
and this, just this it was, on which he meditated most of all."
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
DEDICATION v
PREFACE . . . ( viii
PART FIRST.
THE LOCATION OF EDEN : STATE OF THE QUESTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE RESULTS OF EXPLORERS, HISTORIC AND LEGENDARY.
Columbus approaching the gate . . . •• >:. *•'•.' . 3
The report of Sir John de Maundeville . .'.-*. 7
Adventures of Prince Eirek Io
The voyages of St. Brandan and of Oger 12
The success of the author of The Book of Enoch . , • --4 . . 20
An equestrian's anticipations 21
David Livingstone a searcher for Eden 22
Unanimous verdict : Non est inventus 22
CHAPTER II.
THE RESULTS OF THEOLOGIANS.
Ideas of the church fathers . . . . ^ ,« . .23
Opinions of Luther and of Calvin 25
Contemporary opinion entirely conflicting . . . . .25
Inconclusive character of the Biblical data .... 26
The garden " eastward" 27
The " Euphrates " 28
The problem " unsolved if not insoluble " 32
xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
THE RESULTS OF NON-THEOLOGICAL SCHOLARS : NATURALISTS, ETH
NOLOGISTS, ETC.
The unity of the human species 33
But one " mother-region " 33
Its location — ten different answers . . . ... .35
Views of Darwin, Hackel, Peschel, etc. . . . i . -35
Views of Quatrefages, Obry, etc. . , . . . .36
Locations of lost Atlantis 38
Theory of Friedrich Delitzsch 39
Theory of E. Beauvois 41
Theory of Gerald Massey 42
The Utopians 43
Despair of a solution .43
PART SECOND.
A FRESH HYPOTHESIS : PRIMITIVE EDEN AT THE NORTH
POLE.
CHAPTER I.
THE HYPOTHESIS, AND THE CONDITIONS OF ITS ADMISSIBILITY.
Statement of the hypothesis . . 47
Seven sciences to be satisfied • • , • 48
CHAPTER II.
IMPORTANT NEW FEATURES AT ONCE INTRODUCED INTO THE PROB
LEM OF THE SITE OF EDEN AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE FOR
A VALID SOLUTION.
Seven peculiarities of a polar Eden 50
Our hypothesis consequently most difficult 53
Its certain break-down if not true 53
PART THIRD.
THE HYPOTHESIS SCIENTIFICALLY TESTED AND CONFIRMED.
CHAPTER I.
THE TESTIMONY OF SCIENTIFIC GEOGONY.
Popular prepossessions 57
Secular refrigeration of the earth 57
TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV
Inevitable implications of the doctrine 58
Bearing of these upon our problem 59
CHAPTER II.
THE TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY.
Length of the polar day 60
Mistakes of Geikie and Lyell 60
The actual duration of daylight 61
Experience of Weyprecht and Payer 62
Experience of Barentz 63
Citation from Baron Nordenskjold 63
The statement of Captain Pirn 64
The explanation of discrepancies 65
A safe settlement of the question 66
The polar night 68
Aspects and progress of the polar day 69
A paradisaic abode 70
CHAPTER III.
THE TESTIMONY OF PHYSIOGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY.
A primitive circumpolar continent 71
Anticipated by Klee 71
Speculations of Wallace 72
Postulated by Professor Heer 73
Also by Baron Nordenskjold 73
Testimony of Starkie Gardner . . . . . . .74
Testimony of Geikie 74
Theories as to its submergence 75
Adhemar's theory 75
Theory of tidal action 75
Leibnitz's theory of crust-collapse 79
Summary of evidence under this head 82
CHAPTER IV.
THE TESTIMONY OF PREHISTORIC CLIMATOLOGY.
Primeval temperature at the Pole 83
The evidence of scientific geogony . . . . . .84
The evidence of paleontological botany 84
Testimony of life-history 85
Estimates of Professor Heer 85
Declaration of Sir Charles Lyell 86
Conclusion . . .86
xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL BOTANY.
The starting-point of all floral types 87
A remarkable recent discovery .87
Sir Joseph Hooker . . . .88
The contribution of Heer 89
Of Professor Asa Gray • . . .90
The claim of Count Saporta . . 90
The conclusions of Otto Kuntze 92
CHAPTER VI.
THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL ZOOLOGY.
Geographical distribution of animals 93
First remarkable fact . . . . . 93
Second remarkable fact 94
Language of Professor Orton 94
Language of Professor Packard 94
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace cited 95
Conclusion 95
CHAPTER VII.
THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND GEN
ERAL ETHNOLOGY.
One traveler who has been in Eden 97
His note-books lost 97
What says Paleoethnique science ? 97
The first conclusions of Quatrefages 98
His premonitions of a new doctrine 98
Count Saporta's conclusions 99
F. Muller and M. Wagner's views Io°
Anthropogony by virtue of ice and cold IO°
An unacceptable theory IO1
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCLUSION OF PART THIRD.
A word from Principal Dawson I(
Summary of results thus far . . . ' . • • .102
An unexpected reinforcement IO3
" Where did Life Begin ? " IO3
Confirmatory extracts IO4
TABLE OF CONTENTS. xvii
PART FOURTH.
THE HYPOTHESIS CONFIRMED BY ETHNIC TRADITION.
CHAPTER I.
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY AND MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY.
The mistaken modern assumption 117
The "True Key" 120
General statement 121
The " Mountain of the World " ' 123
The same in Egyptian Mythology 124
In the Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian .... 126
In the Chinese .•'•'.-. ; . 128
In the Indo-Aryan 129
In the Buddhistic . . .131
In the Iranian 133
In the Greek and Roman ". '' Y 135
The Underworld 137
Cautions as to interpretation • . . . .' . . . 137
The chorography of Christian hymns • . . « . ; ". 138
CHAPTER II.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN ANCIENT JAPANESE THOUGHT.
The most ancient Japanese book . ........... . . . 140
Japanese cosmogony . . . . ... .. ... 140
Izanagi's spear ...... . 140
" The Island of the Congealed Drop " . '. . . . 141
Sir Edward Reed places it at the Pole ...... 141
Mr. Griffis reaches the same conclusion ..... 141
CHAPTER III.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN CHINESE THOUGHT.
The Tauist paradise . . . ; .' . -. '•••'. . 143
Descriptions . . . . •. . •. -; . 143
The stupendous world-pillar .• . 144
Connects the terrestrial and celestial paradises . . . '•; 145
Same idea in the Talmud . . .• : [i' v . 145
" The Strength of the Hill of Sion " . ;. -. 'V':'. 145
Shang-te's upper and lower palaces 146
At the celestial and terrestrial Poles 146
XViii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN EAST ARYAN OR HINDU THOUGHT.
The world of the Brahmans 148
The abode of Yama 149
The varshas of the upper world 150
The northward journey to Mount Meru 150
The descent to Uttarakuru 151
Illustrations of the Puranic world 151
Ilavrita, the Hindu's Eden 151
Its north polar position 151
Lenormant's language 151
Ritter's unwitting testimony 154
" The polar region is Meru " 154
"Meru the Garden of the Tree of Life " 154
CHAPTER V.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN IRANIAN OR OLD-PERSIAN THOUGHT.
The primitive pair and their abode 155
Key to the Iranian cosmography 155
The Chinvat Bridge 155
Current misinterpretations 156
Twelve questions answered 156
True nature of the bridge 158
Its position • . • 1 58
Position of Kvaniras 158
The mythic geography of the Persians 159
Diagram of the Keshvares 159
Polar position of " Iran the Ancient " . . . . . . 161
CHAPTER VI.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN AKKADIAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABY
LONIAN THOUGHT.
The sacred mountain . .163
Chaldasan cosmology ,-•••' . 163
Lenormant's exposition , , • , . 163
Three inconsistencies . . . . . .'..-... 165
Location of the world-mountain 166
Lenormant's difficulties 166
The true solution 168
Two Akkads 168
The mount of the Underworld 169
It determines the site of Kharsak 170
And this the site of the Akkadian Eden 171
TABLE OF CONTENTS. xix
CHAPTER VII.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN THOUGHT.
Underestimates of Egyptian science 172
Six theses in Egyptian cosmology 173
Its earth a sphere 174
Northern and southern termini 174
Four supports of heaven at the North 174
A parallel in Buddhist cosmology 175
The southern hemisphere the Underworld 176
The highest North the abode of the gods 179
An interesting hieroglyph 179
Plato's Egyptian Eden-story 181
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT.
Supposed discrepancies of tradition 182
Possible agreement 182
A reminiscence of Mount Meru 183
Renan and Lenormant 183
Lost Atlantis . . .'.'." 184
Deukalion, a man of the North . 186
The Isles of Kronos . . .' 187
The Golden Age 187
Wolfgang Menzel's verdict . ,' .' .' '_• ', . . . 187
Conclusion and transition . 187
PART FIFTH.
FURTHER VERIFICATIONS OF THE HYPOTHESIS BASED UPON
A STUDY OF THE PECULIARITIES OF A POLAR PARADISE.
CHAPTER I.
THE EDEN STARS.
Stellar motion at the Pole . . . «: .-:•,. .' . . .191
Has tradition any reminiscence of such ? . . • . . 191
The strange doctrine of Anaxagoras . . . . . . 191
Chaldaean and Egyptian traditions 193
A natural explanation . . .* .' : . . . . • 194
The myth of Phaethon . . . ; : . . 195
Iranian and Aztec traditions . 196
Result 196
XX TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II
THE EDEN DAY.
Length of day at the Pole . . '."'". . . . . 197
Sunrise in the South . . . . . . , . 197
The tradition of the Northmen . ,.'..' . . . . 197
The tradition of the ancient Persians ... . . . 197
The tradition of the East Aryans . . . " . ' . . i .198
The year- day of Homer ... . . .."" . . . 200
The tradition of the Navajos . . . . . . x . 201
CHAPTER III.
THE EDEN ZENITH.
The polar zenith is the Pole .' 202
This the true heaven of the first men v •. . . • 202
The Hebrew conception . .. ... . . ^ • • 203
The Egyptian conception . . „ . . . . . 208
The Akkadian conception . . 209
The Assyrio- Babylonian conception . . . , . 209
The Sabaean conception 210
The Vedic conception . . .... . . 210
The Buddhistic conception . . . . . . . .211
The Phoenician conception . 212
The Greek conception . . . . » . . . .212
The Etruscan and Roman conception . . ,. . . 213
The Japanese conception . .'. .215
The Chinese conception 215
The ancient Germanic conception 217
The ancient Finnic conception .218
How came the Biblical Eden to be in the East ? . . . .219
Solution of the problem . 219
Confirmations and illustrations 222
CHAPTER IV.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH.
Prevalence of the expression 225
Its symbolical and commemorative character .... 228
The Jerusalem earth-centre 234
That of the Greeks . . . . . . . . . 234
That of the Babylonians . . . , * . . . . 239
That of the Hindus ......... 240
TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxi
That of the Persians 243
That of the Chinese 244
That of the Japanese 245
That of the Northmen 246
That of the Mexicans 246
That of the Peruvians and others 247
Result 248
CHAPTER V.
THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER.
Origin and nature of this river 250
Sacred hydrography of the Persians 251
All waters have one headspring 251
Also one place of discharge .251
Exposition of the system 252
Similar ideas among the Greeks 254
The Vedic system 257
The Puranic 259
Traces in Christian legend 260
CHAPTER VI.
THE CENTRAL TREE.
The tree in the midst of the garden 262
Were there two ? •* . . . 262
Its inevitable significance if at the North Pole .. -..:.;! j '• • . 263
The Yggdrasil of the Northmen 264
The World-tree of the Akkadians 264
The Tat-pillar of the Egyptians 265
The Winged Oak of the Phoenicians 266
The White Horn of the Persians . , , ,, ,,.,,,,. . 267
The cosmic Asvattha of the Hindus . . . . 269
The holy Palm of the Greeks 270
The Bodhi tree of the Buddhists . . . . . . .271
The Irmensul of the Saxons 272
The Arbre Sec of the Middle Ages 273
The Tong of the Chinese 274
The World-reed of the Navajos 274
The Apple-tree of Avalon 276
The star-bearing World-tree of the Finns 276
XX11 TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE.
Ethnic traditions of the Earth's deterioration .... 279
Also of the deterioration of mankind 281
Stature and longevity of primeval men 281
All credible on our hypothesis . .'.*.'.", . 284
Language of Professor Nicholson 285
A citation from Figuier . . . ,,.„. . . . . 285
The gigantic Sequoia of Arctic origin 286
Animal life in the Tertiary period . . . , . . 289
Primitive forms by no means monstrosities 294
All this wealth of fauna from the North 297
CHAPTER VIII.
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT.
Nature of the argument • 300
Seven tests applicable to any location . . . . 300
Seven others peculiar to a location at the Pole .... 300
A double demonstration . . 301
Bailly's approximation to the truth 303
Another independent line of evidence 303
Philosophy of previous failures .'''."'. . . . . 304
Philosophy of mediaeval confusion . 304
Patristic descriptions made plain 305
The world of Cosmas Indicopleustes 3°5
The world of Columbus . . 3°6
The world of Dante 3°7
How highest heaven came to be under foot 3°9
PART SIXTH.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OUR RESULTS.
CHAPTER I.
THEIR BEARING UPON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL
PHYSICS.
The sciences immediately affected 3T3
The services of biology to archaeology 3T4
The services of archaeology to biology 3*4
Narrowness of many biologists 3*5
Evils thereof . 3*5
TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxili
The true corrective 317
The latest generalization of paleontology 317
Anticipated in two Persian myths 317
Terrestrial life-gamut of the Hindus 319
Its lesson to students of the Origin of Life . . . -319
Extraordinary biological conditions 320
Most favorable of all at the Poles 320
Biological superiority of the North Pole 321
Reasons to be more fully investigated 322
Heightened fascination of polar exploration . . . . 325
CHAPTER II.
THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE STUDY OF ANCIENT LIT
ERATURE.
Darwin's primeval man 326
His discovery of the sky . . . . . . . .327
And of trees of infinite height 327
The " short memories " of Vedic worshipers .... 327
Their ocean-producing imaginations .• ^.- . . . 328
Bunbury on Homeric science . .- .• . . . 328
Exegetical distortions of ancient thought . . ' ;<; . •. . 328
Homer's cosmology re-expounded . . .• ; :. . "• . 329
First, as to the movement of the sun * , .- . . . 329
Second, as to the location of Hades . .• . . . . 332
Third, as to the cosmic water-system . . • '• Y • '' • ; ' ' . . 333
Fourth, as to the Olympos of the gods . *' . « . 338
Fifth, as to the tall pillars of Atlas . . . . . . 350
The exegetical method dictated by our results . . . . 359
Its fruitfulness in the future . . . . . . . . 360
CHAPTER III.
THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN
AND EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION.
The pan-ethnic account . r ' . . . • . . . 363
Hume's dissent . : . • . . 364
The doctrine of Comte '..''. . 369
Miiller's refutation of primitive fetichism . . . • -. . 370
Sir John Lubbock's scheme 372
Refutation by Roskoff and others . . . . •. . 375
Caspari's theory 375
The theory of Jules Baissac 382
XXIV TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Current approximations of teaching 385
As to the origin of the arts 386
As to intellectual powers of the first men 386
As to their super-fetichistic attitude 390
As to their monogamous family form 392
As to their capacity for monotheism 397
Seven conclusions "... 403
CHAPTER IV.
THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
AND ON THE THEORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION.
The apostles of primeval savagery 407
Their doctrine 407
Sub-savage stupidity of the first men 408
Dr. Wilhelm Mannhardt's representation 409
A most important primitive discovery 410
Daphne not a tree 410
Emphatic demand for antediluvian longevity .... 410
The new Babel 411
Nine memoranda 41 1
Primeval human history 418
The ancient ethnic view Biblical and true 419
Plato's antediluvian age 420
The consensus of all ancient religions 422
The " Stone Age " in the light of our results .... 422
Origin of postdiluvian laws and states 423
An imaginary conversation 424
A pagan testimony 432
To those who hear not Moses and the Prophets . . . 432
Conclusion 432
APPENDIX.
I The Earth of Columbus not a True Sphere . . .435
II. How the Earth was Peopled 437
III. Reception of " The True Key " 45°
IV. The Earth and World of the Hindus . . . -459
V. The World-Pillar of the Rig Veda 465
VI. Homer's Abode of the Dead 46?
VII. Latest Polar Research 4§7
VIII. Trustworthiness of Early Tradition .... 492
IX. Index of Authors cited 497
X. Index to the Work 5°2
ILLUSTRATIONS.
KEY TO ANCIENT COSMOLOGY Frontispiece.
NIGHT SKIES OF EDEN 68
THE ANTIPODAL POLAR MOUNTAINS 123
THE EARTH OF THE HINDUS. No. 1 152
THE EARTH OF THE HINDUS. No. II 152
THE EARTH OF THE PERSIANS 159
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH 226
THE EARTH OF COLUMBUS -307
THE EARTH OF DANTE 307
THE WORLD OF HOMER 479
PART FIRST.
LOCATION OF EDEN: STATE OF THE
QUESTION.
CHAP.
I. RESULTS OF THE EXPLORERS, HISTORIC AND LEGEND
DARY.
II. RESULTS OF THE THEOLOGIANS.
III. RESULTS OF NON-THEOLOGICAL SCHOLARS : NATURAL-
ISTS, ETHNOLOGISTS, ARCHAEOLOGISTS, etc.
You shall understand that no mortal may approach to that Paradise ; for by land
no man may go, for wild beasts that are in the deserts, and for the high mountains
and great huge rocks that no man may pass by for the dark places that are there ;
and by the rivers may no man go, for the water runs so roughly and so sharply, be
cause it comes down so outrageously from the high places above, that it runs in so
great waves that no ship may row or sail against it ; and the water roars so, and
makes so huge a noise, and so great a tempest, that no man may hear another in the
ehip though he. cried with all the might he could. Many great lords have assayed
with great will many times to pass by those rivers towards Paradise, with full
great companies ; but they might not speed in their voyage ; and many died for
weariness of rowing against the strong waves ; and many of them became blind,
and many deaf, from the noise of the water ; and some perished and were lost in
the waves ; so that no mortal man may approach to that place without the special
grace of God. — SIR JOHN DE MAUNDEVILLB.
CHAPTER I.
THE RESULTS OF EXPLORERS, HISTORIC AND
LEGENDARY.
Man lernt die Welt am besten durch Reisen kennen.
K. H. W. VOLCKER.
ONE of the most interesting and pathetic pas
sages to be found in all literature is that in which
Christopher Columbus announces to his royal pa
trons his supposed discovery of the ascent to the
gate of the long-lost Garden of Eden. With what
emotions must his heart have thrilled as, steering
up this ascent, he felt his " ships smoothly rising
toward the sky," the weather becoming "milder" as
he rose ! To be so near the Paradise of God's own
planting, to be the first discoverer of the way in
which the believing world could at length, after so
many ages, once more approach its sacred precincts
even if forbidden to enter, — what an exquisite ex
perience it must have been to the lonely spirit of
that great explorer !
It is his third voyage. He is in the Gulf of Paria
to the north or north-west of the mouth of the Ori
noco. In his loyal epistle to Ferdinand and Isabella
thus he writes : —
The Holy Scriptures record that our Lord made the
earthly Paradise and planted in it the tree of life ; and
thence springs a fountain from which the four princi
pal rivers of the world take their source ; namely, the
4 PARADISE FOUND.
Ganges in India, the Tigris and Euphrates, and the
Nile.
I do not find, nor ever have found, any account by the
Romans or Greeks which fixes in a positive manner the
site of the terrestrial Paradise, neither have I seen it given
in any mappe-monde, laid down from authentic sources.
Some placed it in Ethiopia at the sources of the Nile, but
others, traversing all these countries, found neither the
temperature nor the altitude of the sun correspond with
their ideas respecting it ; nor did it appear that the over
whelming waters of the deluge had been there. Some
pagans pretended to adduce arguments to establish that
it was in the Fortunate Islands, now called the Canaries.
St. Isidore, Bede, and Strabo l and the Master of scho
lastic history,2 with St. Ambrose and Scotus, and all the
learned theologians agree that the earthly Paradise is in
the East.
I have already described my ideas concerning this
hemisphere and its form,8 and I have no doubt that if
I could pass below the equinoctial line after reaching the
highest point of which I have spoken, I should find a
much milder temperature and a variation in the stars and
in the water : not that I suppose that elevated point to
be navigable, nor even that there is water there ; indeed,
I believe it is impossible to ascend thither, because I am
convinced that it is the spot of the earthly Paradise,
whither no one can go but by God's permission ; but this
land which your Highnesses have now sent me to explore
is very extensive, and I think there are many other
countries in the south, of which the world has never had
any knowledge.
I do not suppose that the earthly Paradise is in the
form of a rugged mountain, as the descriptions of it have
made it appear, but that it is on the summit of the spot
1 Walafried Strabus of Reichenau, Baden.
2 Petrus Comestor, who wrote the Historia Scholastica.
9 See APPENDIX, Sect. I.
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. 5
which I have described as being in the form of the stalk
[or stem end] of a pear ; the approach to it from a dis
tance must be by a constant and gradual ascent ; but I
believe that, as I have already said, no one could ever
reach the top; I think also that the water I have de
scribed may proceed from it, though it be far off, and that
stopping at the place I have just left, it forms this lake.
There are great indications of this being the terres
trial Paradise, for its situation coincides with the opinions
of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned ;
and, moreover, the other evidences agree with the sup
position, for I have never either read or heard of fresh
water coming in so large a quantity, in close conjunction
with the water of the sea ; the idea is also corroborated
by the blandness of the temperature; and if the water
of which I speak does not proceed from the earthly
Paradise, it seems to be a still greater wonder, for I do
not believe that there is any river in the world so large
and deep.
When I left the Dragon's Mouth, which is the north
ernmost of the two straits which I have described, and
which I so named on the day of our lady of August,1 I
found that the sea ran so strongly to the westward that
between the hour of mass,2 when I weighed anchor, and
the hour of complines 8 I made sixty-five leagues of four
miles each ; and not only was the wind not violent, but
on the contrary very gentle, which confirmed me in the
conclusion that in sailing southward there is a continu
ous ascent, while there is a corresponding descent to
wards the north.
I hold it for certain that the waters of the sea move
from east to west with the sky, and that in passing this
track they hold a more rapid course, and have thus eaten
away large tracts of land, and hence has resulted this
great number of islands ; indeed, these islands them-
1 The feast of the Assumption.
8 Probably six A. M. 8 Nine P. M.
6 PARADISE FOUND.
selves afford an additional proof of it, for on the one
hand, all those which lie west and east, or a little more
obliquely north-west and south-east, are broad; while
those which lie north and south or north-east and south
west, that is in a directly contrary direction to the said
winds, are narrow ; furthermore, that these islands should
possess the most costly productions is to be accounted
for by the mild temperature, which comes to them from
heaven, since these are the most elevated parts of the
world. It is true that in some parts the waters do not
appear to take this course, but this only occurs in certain
spots where they are obstructed by land, and hence they
appear to take different directions. . . .
I now return to my subject of the land of Gracia,
and of the river and lake found there, which latter might
more properly be called a sea ; for a lake is but a small
expanse of water, which, when it becomes great, deserves
the name of a sea, just as we speak of the Sea of Galilee
and the Dead Sea ; and I think that if the river men
tioned does not proceed from the terrestrial Paradise, it
comes from an Immense tract of land situated in the
south, of which hitherto no knowledge has been obtained.
But the more I reason on the subject the more satisfied
I become that the terrestrial Paradise is situated in the
spot I have described ; and I ground my opinion upon
the arguments and authorities already quoted. May it
please the Lord to grant your Highnesses a long life, and
health and peace, to follow out so noble an investigation ;
in which I think our Lord will receive great service,
Spain considerable increase of its greatness, and all
Christians much consolation and pleasure, because by this
means the name of our Lord will be published abroad.1
Alas for the hope of settling the problem of
Eden's site by actual exploration ! Columbus never
1 Select Letters of Christopher Columbus. Translated by R. H.
Major, F. S. A. 2d ed., London, 1860 : pp. 140-147.
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. J
lived to find his Paradise ; and geographers have
long ago ascertained that the golden summit of the
world is not in Venezuela, nor in any of its neighbor
states.
Of course Columbus supposed himself to be off
the eastern coast, not of a new continent, but of
Asia. His idea of the location of the terrestrial
Paradise as in, or to the eastward of, Farther India
was the prevailing idea of his age. The Hereford
map of the world, dating from the thirteenth century,
represents the favored spot as a circular island to the
East of India, and as separated from the mainland,
not only by the sea, but also by a battlemented wall,
with its one gate to the West, through which our
first parents were supposed to have been expelled.
Hugo de St. Victor wrote : " Paradise is a spot in
the Orient productive of all kinds of woods and
pomiferous trees. It contains the Tree of Life ;
there is neither cold nor heat there, but perpetually
an equable temperature. It contains a fountain
which flows forth in four rivers." So Gautier de
Metz, in a poem written in the thirteenth century,
describes the terrestrial Paradise as situated in
an unapproachable region in Asia, surrounded by
flames, and guarded at its only gate by an armed
angel.
In the year 1322 Sir John de Maundeville made
his memorable pilgrimage to the East. In his ac
count of these travels, after describing the marvel
ous kingdom of Prester John in India, he says :
"And beyond the land and isles and deserts of
Prester John's lordship, in going straight towards
the East men find nothing but mountains and great
rocks ; and there is the dark region where no man
8 PARADISE FOUND.
may see, neither by day nor by night, as they of the
country say. And that desert and that place of
darkness lasts from this coast unto terrestrial Para
dise, where Adam, our first father, and Eve were
put, who dwelt there but a little while ; and that is
towards the East, at the beginning of the earth. . . .
Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not
there. It is far beyond ; and I repent not going
there, but I was not worthy. But as I have heard
say of wise men beyond I shall tell you with good
will. Terrestrial Paradise, as wise men say, is the
highest place of the earth ; and it is so high that it
nearly touches the circle of the moon there, as the
moon makes her turn. For it is so high that the
flood of Noah might not come to it, that would have
covered all the earth of the world all about and
above and beneath except Paradise. And this Para
dise is inclosed all about with a wall, and men know
not whereof it is ; for the wall is covered all over
with moss as it seems : and it seems not that the
wall is natural stone. And that wall stretches from
the South to the North ; and it has but one entry,
which is closed with burning fire, so that no man
that is mortal dare enter. And in the highest place
of Paradise, exactly in the middle, is a well that
casts out four streams, which run by divers lands,
of which the first is called Pison, or Ganges, that
runs throughout India or Emlak, in which river are
many precious stones, and much lignum, aloes, and
much sand of gold. And the other river is called
Nile, or Gyson, which goes through Ethiopia, and
after through Egypt. And the other is called Tigris
which runs by Assyria and by Armenia the Great.
And the other is called Euphrates, which runs
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. 9
through Media, Armenia, and Persia. And men
there beyond say that all the sweet waters of the
world, above and beneath, take their beginning from
the well of Paradise ; and out of that well all waters
come and go." l
Various writers and map-makers of the same age
seem very evidently to have identified the Paradise
of Genesis with the island of Ceylon. Even to this
day a mount near the centre of the island bears the
name of "Adam's Peak." According to Moham
medan tradition, this was only so called because it
was the place where Adam alighted when cast out
of the true celestial Paradise in heaven. Neverthe
less, Christian tradition or legend long lingered about
Ceylon as the genuine site of primitive Eden.2
In entire accord with this view is the remarkable
story of Prince Eirek, as told in an Icelandic Saga
of the fourteenth century. Mr. Baring-Gould, in a
style not very reverent, has summarized the tale as
follows : —
1 Early Travels in Palestine. Edited by Thos. Wright, London,
1848, p. 276.
2 Even Maundeville, whose Paradise, as we have seen, was still
farther to the East, found here a Fountain of Youth whose head
spring was in Paradise : " Toward the head of that forest is the cytee
of Polombe [Columbo], and above the cytee is a great mountayne,
also clept Polombe. And of that mount the Cytee hathe his name.
And at the foot of that Mount is a fayr welle and a gret, that hathe
odour and savour of all spices ; and at every hour of the day he
chaungethe his odour and his savour dyversely. And whoso drynk-
ethe 3 times fasting of that watre of that welle, he is hool of alle
maner sykenesse that he hathe. And thei that duellen there and
drynken often of that welle, thei nevere have sykenesse and thei
semen alle weys yonge. I have dronken there of 3 or 4 sithes ; and
zit, methinkethe, I fare the better. Some men clepen it the Welle
of Youthe ; for thei that often drynken thereat semen alle weys
youngly and lyven withouten sykenesse. And men seyn, that that
welle comethe out of Paradys ; and therefore it is so vertuous."
IO PARADISE FOUND.
Eirek was a son of Thrand, king of Drontheim, and
having taken upon him a vow to explore the Deathless
Land he went to Denmark, where he picked up a friend
of the same name as himself. They then went to Con
stantinople, and called upon the Emperor, who held a
long conversation with them, which is duly reported, rela
tive to the truths of Christianity and the site of the
Deathless Land, which, he assures them, is nothing more
nor less than Paradise.
" The world," said the monarch, who had not forgotten
his geography since he left school, "is precisely 180,000
stages round (about 1,000,000 English miles), and it is
not propped up on posts, — not a bit ! — it is supported
by the power of God ; and the distance between earth
and heaven is 100,045 m^es (another MS. reads 9382
miles ; the difference is immaterial) ; and round about
the earth is a big sea called Ocean." " And what 's to
the south of the earth ? " asked Eirek. " Oh ! there is
the end of the world, and that is India." " And pray
where am I to find the Deathless Land ? " " That lies —
Paradise, I suppose you mean — well, it lies slightly east
of India."
Having obtained this information, the two Eireks
started, furnished with letters from the Greek Emperor.
They traversed Syria, and took ship, — probably at Bal-
sora ; then, reaching India, they proceeded on their jour
ney on horseback, till they came to a dense forest, the
gloom of which was so great, through the interlacing of
the boughs, that even by day the stars could be observed
twinkling, as though they were seen from the bottom of a
well.
On emerging from the forest, the two Eireks came
upon a strait, separating them from a beautiful land,
which was unmistakably Paradise ; and the Danish
Eirek, intent on displaying his Scriptural knowledge, pro
nounced the strait to be the river Pison. This was
crossed by a stone bridge, guarded by a dragon.
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. II
The Danish Eirek, deterred by the prospect of an en
counter with this monster, refused to advance, and even
endeavored to persuade his friend to give up the attempt
to enter Paradise as hopeless, after that they had come
within sight of the favored land. But the Norseman de
liberately walked, sword in hand, into the maw of the
dragon, and the next moment, to his infinite surprise and
delight, found himself liberated from the gloom of the
monster's interior, and safely placed in Paradise.
The land was most beautiful, and the grass as gor
geous as purple ; it was studded with flowers, and was
traversed by honey rills. The land was extensive and
level, so that there was not to be seen mountain or hill,
and the sun shone cloudless, without night and darkness ;
the calm of the air was great, and there was but a feeble
murmur of wind, and that which there was breathed red
olent with the odor of blossoms. After a short walk,
Eirek observed what certainly must have been a remark
able object, namely, a tower or steeple self-suspended
in the air, without any support whatever, though access
might be had to it by means of a slender ladder. By this
Eirek ascended into a loft of the tower, and found there
an excellent cold collation prepared for him. After hav
ing partaken of this he went to sleep, and in vision beheld
and conversed with his guardian angel, who promised
to conduct him back to his fatherland, but to come for
him again and fetch him away from it forever at the ex
piration of the tenth year after his return to Drontheim.
Eirek then retraced his steps to India, unmolested by
the dragon, which did not affect any surprise at having to
disgorge him, and, indeed, which seems to have been,
notwithstanding his looks, but a harmless and passive
dragon.
After a tedious journey of seven years, Eirek reached
his native land, where he related his adventures, to the
confusion of the heathen, and to the delight and edifi
cation of the faithful. And in the tenth year, and at
12 PARADISE FOUND.
break of day, as Eirek went to prayer, God's Spirit caught
him away, and he was never seen again in this world : so
here ends all we have to say of him.
Here we get farther than with Columbus, but
however beautiful and credible this story of Eden-
exploration may have been five hundred years ago,
we now know that the only Paradise in Ceylon is a
symbolical Buddhist one,1 as far removed from the
primitive garden of Genesis as Roman Catholic " Cal
varies" in South America are from the primitive
Calvary of the crucifixion. Moreover, even the
scribes of five hundred years ago, however credulous
in other things, seem well to have understood the
true character of this story of travel, for " according
to the majority of the MSS. the story purports to be
nothing more than a religious novel." 2
As the Keltic terrestrial Paradise, Avalon, was a
sea-girt island in the waters of the North, it could
of course be reached only by ship. The first to ac
complish this feat, so far as Christian legend informs
us, was St. Brandan, son of Finlogho, a celebrated
saint of the Irish Church, who died A. D. 576 or
577. According to the story an angel brought to
this good abbot a book from heaven, in which such
marvelous things were narrated concerning the then
unknown portions of the world that the honest fa
ther charged both angel and book with falsehood,
1 " The Buddhists of Ceylon have endeavored to transform their
central mountain, Deva-kuta (Peak of the Gods), into Meru, and to
find four streams descending from its sides to correspond with the
rivers of their Paradise." — Obry, Le Berceau de rEsfece Humaine.
Amiens, 1858 : p. 118 n. Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde. Bonn,
1862 : Bd. i., 196.
2 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. London, 1866 :
p. 236.
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. 13
and in his righteous indignation burned the latter.
As a punishment for his unbelief God sentenced
him to recover the book. He must search through
hell and earth and sea until he finds the heavenly
gift. The token given him by the angel is that
when he sees two twin fires flame up he shall know
that they are the two eyes of a certain ox, and on the
tongue of that ox he shall find the book. For seven
long years he sails the Western and the Northern
Ocean.1 He here encounters more marvels than
were recorded in the original incredible book, and
is even permitted to visit the earthly Paradise. The
beauty of the soil, of the fountain with four streams,
of the magnificent castle and castle halls lighted
with self-luminous stones and adorned with all man
ner of precious jewels, surpassed description. The
stay of the party seems, however, to have been short,
and unfortunately just where the island was located
— the commander forgets to mention.
A more elaborate and fanciful picture of the same
mediaeval Paradise is furnished us in the story of
Oger, or Holger, a Danish knight of the age of
Charlemagne. In a plain prose rendering, this is
the style in which a famous court minstrel of six
hundred years ago was accustomed to chant the
adventure to admiring audiences.
Caraheu and Gloriande were in a boat with a fair
company, and Oger had with him a thousand men-at-
arms. When they were a certain way on, there arose so
mighty a tempest that they knew not what to do, only to
commit their souls to God. So great was the storm that
the mast of Oger's ship brake, and he was constrained to
1 Carl Schroeder, Sanct Brandan. Ein lateinischcr und drei
deutsche Textc. Erlangen, 1871 : pp. xii., xiii. xn& passim.
14 PARADISE FOUND.
embark in a little vessel with a few of his comrades, and
the wind struck them with such fury that they lost sight
of Caraheu. Caraheu was so sore troubled that he was
like to die, and he began to mourn the noble Oger ; for
he wist not what was become of the boat. And Oger in
like manner lamented Caraheu. Thus grieved Caraheu
and the Christians in his company, saying, " Alas ! Oger,
what is become of thee ? This is, I ween, the most sud
den departure that I heard of ever." " Nay, but cease,
my beloved," said Gloriande ; " he will not fail to come
again when God wills, for he cannot be far away." " Ah,
lady," said Caraheu, "you know not the dangers of the
sea ; and I pray God to take him into his keeping." . . .
Now I will leave speaking of Caraheu, and return to
Oger, who was in peril, yet was ever grieving for his
friend, and saying, " Ah, Caraheu, hope of the remaining
days of my life, thou whom I loved next to God ! How
has God allowed me to lose so soon you and your lady ? "
At that moment the great ship, in which Oger had left
his men-at-arms, struck against a rock, and he saw them
all perish, at which sight he was like to die of grief. And
presently a loadstone rock began to draw towards it the
boat in which Oger was. Oger, seeing himself thus taken,
recommended his soul to God, saying, " My God, my
Father and Creator, who hast made me in Thine image
and semblance, have pity on me now, and leave me not
here to die ; for that I have used my power as was best
to the increase of the Catholic faith. But if it must be
that Thou take me, I commit to Thy care my brother
Guyou, and all my relatives and friends, especially my
rephew Gautier, who is minded to serve Thee, and bring
the paynim into Thy Holy Church. . . . Ah, my God !
had I known the peril of this adventure, I should never
have abandoned the beauty, sense, and honor of Clarice,
Queen of England. Had I but gone back to her, I should
have seen, too, my redoubted sovereign, Charlemagne,
witn all the princes who surround him."
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. 15
Meanwhile the boat continued to float upon the water
till it reached the loadstone castle, which they call the
Chateau d'Avalon, which is but a little way from the
earthly Paradise, whither were snatched in a beam of
fire Elias and Enoch, and where was Morgue la Fe'e, who
at his birth had given him such great gifts. Then the
manners saw well that they were drawing near to the
loadstone rock, and they said to Oger, " My lord, com
mend thyself to God, for it is certain that at this moment
we are come to our voyage's end ; " and as they spake the
bark with a swing attached itself to the rock, as though
it were cemented there.
That night Oger thought over the case in which he
was, but he scarce could tell of what sort it might be.
And the sailors came and said to Oger, " My lord, we are
held here without remedy ; wherefore let us look to our
stores, for we are here for the remainder of our lives."
To which Oger made answer, " If this be so, then will I
make consideration of our case, for I would assign to each
one his share, to the least as to the greatest." For him
self Oger kept a double portion, for it is the law of the
sea that the master of the ship has as much as two others.
But if that rule had not been, he would still have needed
a double quantity, for he ate as much as two common
men.
When Oger had apportioned his share to each, he
said, " Masters, be sparing, I pray you, of your food as
much as you may, for so soon as ye have no more be sure
that I myself will throw you into the sea." The skipper
answered him, " My lord, thou wilt escape no better than
we." Their food failed them all, one after another, and
Oger cast them into the sea, and he remained alone.
Then he was so troubled that he knew not what to do.
" Alas ! my God, my Creator," said he, " hast Thou at this
hour forsaken me ? I have now no one to comfort me in
my misfortune." Thereupon, whether it were his fantasy
or no, it seemed to him that a voice replied, " God orders
1 6 PARADISE FOUND.
that so soon as it be night thou go to a castle after thou
hast come to an island which thou wilt presently find.
And when thou art on the island thou wilt find a small
path leading to the castle. And whatsoever thing thou
seest there, let not that affray thee." And Oger looked,
but wist not who had spoken.
Oger waited the return of night, to learn the truth of
that which the voice foretold, and he was so amazed that
he wist not what to do, but set himself to the trial. And
when night came he committed himself to God, praying
Him for mercy ; and straightway he looked and beheld the
Castle of Avalon, which shone wondrously. Many nights
before he had seen it, but by day it was not visible.
Howbeit, so soon as Oger saw the castle he set about to
get there. He saw before him the ships that were fastened
to the loadstone rock, and now he walked from ship to
ship, and so gained the island; and when there he at once
set himself to scale the hill by a path which he found.
When he reached the gate of the castle, and sought to
enter, there came before him two great lions, who stopped
him and cast him to the ground. But Oger sprang up
and drew his sword, Curtain, and straightway cleft one of
them in twain ; then the other sprang and seized Oger
by the neck, and Oger turned round and struck off his
head.
When Oger had performed this deed, he gave thanks
to our Lord, and then he entered the hall of the castle,
where he found many viands, and a table set as if one
should dine there ; but no prince nor lord could he see.
Now he was amazed to find no one, save only a horse,
which sat at the table as if it had been a human being.
This horse, which was called Papillon (Psyche ?), waited
upon Oger, gave him to drink from a golden goblet, and
at length conducted him to his chamber, and to a bed
whose fairy-made coverlet of cloth of gold and ermine
was la plus mignonne chose quifut jamais vue.
When Oger awoke he thought to see Papillon again,
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. l*J
but could see neither him, nor man, nor woman, to show
him the way from the room. He saw a door, and, having
made the sign of the cross, sought to pass out that way ;
but as he tried to do this he encountered a serpent, so
hideous that the like has scarce been seen. It would
have thrown itself upon Oger, but that the knight drew
his sword and made the creature recoil more than ten
feet ; but it returned with a bound, for it was very mighty,
and the twain fell to fight. And now, as Oger saw that
the serpent pressed hard upon him, he struck at it so
doughtily with his sword that he severed it in twain.
After that Oger went along a path which led him to a
garden, so beauteous that it was in truth a little paradise ;
and within were fair trees, bearing fruit of every kind, of
tastes divers, and of such sweet odors that he never smelt
trees like them before.
Oger, seeing these fruits so fine, desired to eat some,
and presently he lighted upon a fine apple-tree, whose
fruit was like gold, and of these apples he took one and
ate. But no sooner had he thus eaten than he became
so sick and weak that he had no power nor manhood
left. And now again he commended his soul to God and
prepared to die. . . . But -at this moment turning round,
he was aware of a fair dame, clothed in white, and so
richly adorned that she was a glory to behold. Now as
Oger looked upon the lady without moving from his
place, he deemed that she was Mary the Virgin, and said,
" Ave Maria," and saluted her. But she said, " Oger,
think not that I am she whom you fancy ; I am she who
was at your birth, and my name is Morgue la Fee, and I
allotted you a gift which was destined to increase your
fame eternally through all lands. But now you have left
your deeds of war to take with ladies your solace ; for
as soon as I have taken you from here I will bring you
to Avalon, where you will see the fairest noblesse in the
world."
And anon she gave him a ring, which had such virtue
1 8 PARADISE FOUND.
that Oger, who was near a hundred years old, returned
to the age of thirty. Then said Oger, " Lady, I am more
beholden to thee than to any other in the world. Blessed
be the hour of thy birth, for, without having done aught
to deserve at your hands, you have given me countless
gifts, and this gift of new life above them all. Ah, lady,
that I were before Charlemagne, that he might see the
condition in which I now stand ; for I feel in me greater
strength than I have ever known. Dearest, how can I
make return for the honor and great good you have done
me ? But I swear that I am at your service all the days
of my life." Then Morgue took him by the hand, and
said, " My loyal friend, the goal of all my happiness, I
will now lead you to my palace in Avalon, where you will
see of noblesse the greatest and of damosels the fairest."
And she took Oger by the hand and led him to the Cas
tle of Avalon, where was King Artus, and Auberon, and
Malambron, who was a sea fairy.
As Oger approached the castle the fairies came to
meet him, dancing and singing marvellous sweetly. And
he saw many fairy dames, richly crowned and apparelled.
And presently came Arthur, and Morgue called to him,
and said, " Come hither, my lord and brother, and salute
the fair flower of chivalry, the honor of the French no
blesse, him in whom all generosity and honor and every
virtue are lodged, Oger le Danois, my loyal love, my
only pleasure, in whom lies for me all hope of happiness."
Then Morgue gave Oger a crown to wear, which was so
rich that none here could count its value ; and it had be
side a wondrous virtue, for every man who bore it on
his brow forgot all sorrow and sadness and melancholy,
and he thought no more of his country nor of his kin that
he had left behind him in the world.
We leave Oger thus " bien assis et entretenu des dames
que fetait merveilles" and return to the earth, where
things were not going so well ; for while Oger was in
Fairie the paynim assembled all their forces and took
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. 19
Jerusalem and proceeded to lay siege to Babylon (that is,
Cairo). Then the most valiant knights who were left on
earth — Moysant, and Florian, and Caraheu, and Gautier
(Oger's nephew) — assembled all their powers to defend
this place. But they lamented greatly because Oger was
no more. And a great battle took place without the
walls of Babylon, in which the Saracens, assisted by a
renegade, the Admiral Gandice, gained the victory.
Oger had been long in the Castle of Avalon, and had
begotten a son by Morgue, when she, having heard of
these doings and of the danger to Christendom, deemed
it needful to awake Oger from his blissful forgetfulness
of all earthly things, and tell him that his presence was
needed in this world once more. Thereupon follows an
account of Oger's returning to earth, where no one knew
him, and all were astonished at his strange garb and
bearing. He inquired for Charlemagne, who had been
long since dead ; the generation below Oger had grown
to be old men, yet he still had the habit of a man of
thirty. We need not wonder that his talk excited suspi
cion. But at length he made himself known to the King
of France, joined his army, and put the paynim to flight.
He had now forgotten his life in Fairie ; he was beloved
by the Queen of France (the King having been killed),
and was about to marry her, when Morgue again ap
peared and carried him off to Avalon.1
Looking back over this long story to see just
where it locates its Paradise, and how one could get
there, we find the data extremely few and discourag
ing. And the older story in Plutarch respecting
1 From Keary's Outlines of Primitive Beliefs, pp. 452-458. He re
marks, "The account which I here translate is only a sixteenth-cen
tury version of the tale, but it is copied directly from the poetic ver
sion of the well-known troubadour Adenez, chief minstrel at the
court of Henry III. of Bavaria (1248-1261), and for his excellence in
his art called Le Roy, or king of all. There can be no doubt that in
its chief particulars the story is far older than the days of Adenez."
20 PARADISE FOUND.
the same isle of blessedness is not less destitute of
indications as to exact locality.1
Going some centuries farther back we find an
other traveler who claims to have been in the ter
restrial Paradise. He says, —
As I looked towards the North, over the mountains, I
saw seven mountains full of precious balsam and odorous
trees and cinnamon and pepper. And from thence I
went over the summits of these mountains far towards the
East, and passed on still farther over the sea and came
far beyond it. And I came into the Garden of Right
eousness, and saw a many-colored crowd of trees of every
kind ; for many and great trees flourish there, very noble
and lovely, and the Tree of Wisdom, which gives wisdom
to any one who eats of it. It is like the Johannis bread
tree ; its fruit is like a cluster of grapes, very good ; and
the fragrance of the tree spreads far around. And I said,
" Fair is this tree, and how beautiful and ravishing its
look ! " And the holy Angel Raphael, who was with me,
answered and said to me, " This is the Tree of Wisdom of
which thy forefathers, thy hoary first parent and thy aged
first mother, ate, and found the knowledge of wisdom,
and their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were
naked, and were driven out of the garden."
This favored explorer, who had the special advan
tage of being guided by a holy angel, was the un
known author of the Book of Enoch, which writing
is believed by some to be as old as the second cen
tury before Christ. No one can read many chapters
of his production, however, without arriving at the
firm conclusion that sacred geography has very lit
tle to hope from such a source, however ancient.2
1 " On the Face appearing in the Orb of the Moon," Sect. 26,
Plutarch's Morals. Goodwin's ed., vol. v., p. 201.
3 Das Buck Henoch. Uebersetzt von Dr. A. Dillmann. Leipsic,
RESULTS OF EXPLORERS. 21
Coming down to the travelers of our own time,
we fare no better, even though they do not tax our
credulity with stories of angelic guides or of guard
ian dragons. One, writing only ten years ago, pro
fessedly from the very Garden itself, momentarily
raises our expectations when he says, " Discoveries
made within the last decade tend to confirm the sup
position that the primeval abode of man was near
the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris ;
and it is not too much to anticipate the exhuming of
inscribed tablets which will fully establish this be
lief." But as suddenly as our hopes are excited, so
suddenly do they die away in disappointment. In
credulous critics greet the suggestion of "exhuming
inscribed tablets" on the subject with a chorus of
derisive laughter. The author himself does not ven
ture to give any of the " discoveries made within the
last decade " which tend to confirm the notion that
Eden was located at the point described. On the
contrary, in the immediately following sentence, he
takes leave of the subject, and in so doing gives us
over to his own admitted uncertainty in the follow
ing terms : " And although, after the lapse of so
many centuries, exact correspondence of topography
is not to be expected, yet guided by the general fea
tures of the scene rather than by the minuter ones,
the present traditional Garden of Eden may be ac
cepted until another has been discovered and its
identity more clearly proved." l In such darkness
dies out the kindled hope. Meantime, in a letter to
Sir Roderick Murchison, published in " The Athe-
1853. There is an earlier English translation by R. Lawrence (Ox
ford, 1821, '33, '38).
1 J. P. Newman, D. D., A Thousand Miles on Horseback. New
York, 1875 : p. 69.
22 PARADISE FOUND.
naeum " not far from the same date, the indefatiga
ble Livingstone disclosed the secret of his tireless
perambulations through Central Africa, — he be
lieved that at the sources of the Nile, could he once
discover them, he would stand upon the site of the
primeval Paradise ! Evidently exploration, wonder
ful as have been its achievements, has not yet solved
the problem of the site of Eden. To this day the
word of Pindar, uttered half a thousand years before
Christ, has remained true : —
" Neither by taking ship,
Neither by any travel on foot,
To the Hyperborean Field
Shalt thou find the wondrous way."
CHAPTER II.
THE RESULTS OF THEOLOGIANS.
Some have placed it in the third heaven, some in the fourth, in the heaven of
the moon, in the moon itself, on a -mountain near the lunar heaven, in the middle
region of the air, out of the earth, upon the earth, beneath the earth, in a place
that is hidden and separated from man. It has been placed under the northern
pole, in Tartary, or in the place now occupied by the Caspian Sea. Others placed
it in the extreme south, in the land of fire ; others in the Levant, or on the
shores of the Ganges, or in the island of Ceylon. It has been placed in China, or
in an inaccessible region bey and the Black Sea; by others in America, in Africa,
etc. — BISHOP HUET.
A n ein Resultat, das auch nur einigermassen befriedigte, ist nicht zu denken.
— WETZER UNO WELTE, Kirchen-Lexicon.
THEOLOGIANS, Christian and Jewish, have in all
ages differed, and irreconcilably differed, as to the
location of the cradle of the human race. The evi
dences of this are so well known, or so easily acces
sible to every intelligent reader, that they need not
be adduced in this place.1
The fathers and theologians of the Early Church
and of the Middle Ages held many curious and con
flicting opinions upon the subject. Some, following
the allegorizing method of Philo, interpreted the
whole narrative in Genesis as a parable setting forth
spiritual things. Eden was not a place, but a state
of spiritual blessedness. The four rivers were not
rivers, but the four cardinal virtues, etc. The
majority, however, held to the historic character of
the narrative, and to the strictly geographical reality
1 See McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological,
and Ecclesiastical Literature, Arts. " Eden " and " Paradise."
24 PARADISE FOUND.
of Eden. To the question of its location, number
less were the answers. Often it was in the far East,
beyond all lands inhabited by men. Sometimes it
was thought of as perhaps within, or under, the
earth, in the regions of the dead. Sometimes it was
neither on nor below the earth, but high above it, in
the third heaven, or some way associated with the
lunar orbit. Again, it would be stated that there
are two paradises, a celestial and a terrestrial one, —
the one in heaven, the other on the earth. Ter-
tullian, conceiving of the torrid zone as the flaming
•sword, which turned every way to keep the way of
the tree of life (Gen. iii. 24), placed Eden beyond
it, in the southern hemisphere. Now it was at the
bottom of the sea ; l or again it held a position mid
way between earth and heaven. Anon, it was on
the summit of a miraculous mountain, which rose to
the height of the moon. Of this mountain only the
base was washed, when by the waters of the Deluge
all other mountains were covered. It was conceived
of as rising in three gigantic stages to its stupen
dous height. All kinds of marvelous plants and
precious metals and gems adorned it, but its su
preme adornment was a divine river, which, starting
from the throne of God in the highest heaven,
descended to the holy garden on the mountain's
head, and thence parting into four, after watering
and beautifying the whole mountain in its descent,
gradually lost more and more of its celestial taste
and vivifying virtues, and became the water system
of the habitable globe. Sometimes the location of
1 "In some legends Eden was submerged by the earliest deluge
that covered the Mount. The happy garden was believed to be lying
at the bottom of Lake Van, in Armenia." — Gerald Massey, The Nat*
ural Genesis, vol. ii., p. 231.
THE RESULTS OF THEOLOGIANS. 2$
this mountain was described as in some distant por
tion of the earth, " where the sea, or earth, and the
sky meet."
Impatient of such contradictions, Luther, in his
own brusque way, rejected all attempts to locate the
primeval garden, declaring that the Deluge had so
changed the face of the earth and the course of its
original rivers that all search was fruitless.
Calvin, on the contrary, confidently affirmed that
the writer of the Genesis narrative must be under
stood as locating the Garden of Eden near the
mouths of the Euphrates. Soon this original diver
sity of Protestant teaching upon the subject became
aggravated by new theories, some of them suggested
by orthodox ingenuity, some introduced by rational
istic conceptions of the semi-mythical character of
the Bible, until at the present time the state of the
ological teaching respecting Eden is, if possible, a
worse Babel than in any preceding age.
For a partial illustration of the confusion one has
only to turn to the most recent and authoritative
biblical, theological, and religious encyclopaedias.
In McClintock and Strong's, the writer on Eden in
clines to locate it in Armenia. In Smith's " Bible
Dictionary" the problem is abandoned as probably
insoluble. In the great German encyclopaedia of
Herzog it is declared necessary to deny to the story
of Eden a strictly historical character ; it is " a bit of
mythical geography." In the supplement, however,
Pressel makes an elaborate argument of many pages
in favor of the location at the junction of the Tigris
and Euphrates. Dillmann, in Schenkel's " Bibel-
Lexicon," places it in the Himalayas, north of India.
In the chief Roman Catholic cyclopaedia, Wetzel
26 PARADISE FOUND.
and Welte's " Kirchen - Lexicon," the writer vacil
lates between Eastern Asia, taken in a vague and
undefined sense, and an equally undefined North.
In Lichtenberg's just completed " Encyclopedic des
Sciences Religieuses " the whole story in Genesis ii.
is declared a "philosophic myth." Professor Brown,
of New York, in the new work edited by Dr. Schaff,
on the basis of Herzog, enumerates a variety of
opinions advocated by others, but refrains from ex
pressing any opinion of his own. Such is all the
light which contemporary theology seems able to
throw upon our problem.
But here some plain reader of the Bible opens at
the second chapter of Genesis, and reads, "And
the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden ;
and there he put the man whom he had formed."
And the plain reader asks how a believer in the
Bible can doubt that this passage fixes the location
of the garden somewhere to the East of Palestine.
But, looking a little more critically, our inquirer
himself quickly sees that the verse does not neces
sarily affirm anything as to the direction of the gar
den from the writer. It may naturally mean that the
garden was planted in the eastern part of the land
of Eden, wherever that was ; and turning to the
most careful and orthodox commentators, he finds
that not a few take this view of it. Moreover, Miq-
qedemy here translated " eastward," may be other
wise translated, as it is in King James's Version, in
the passages Ps. Ixxiv. 12, Ixxvii. 6, and elsewhere.
In fact, in the Vulgate it is here translated, a prin-
cipio, " in or from the beginning." Among the
early Greek translators, Symmachus, Theodotion,
and Aquila understand the term in the same way,
THE RESULTS OF THEOLOGIANS. 2?
Hence, nearly two hundred years ago, the learned
Thomas Burnet wrote as follows: "Some have
thought that the word Miqqedem, Gen. ii. 8, was to
be rendered in the East, or Eastward, as we read it,
and therefore determined the site of Paradise ; but
't is only the Septuagint translate it so ; all the
other Greek versions, and St. Jerome, the Vulgate,
the Chaldee Paraphrase, and the Syriak, render it
from the beginning, or in the beginning, or to that
effect. And we that do not believe the Septuagint
to have been infallible or inspired have no reason to
prefer their single authority above all the rest." 1
The same writer says again, " We may safely say
that none of the Christian Fathers, Latin or Greek,
ever placed Paradise in Mesopotamia ; that is a con
ceit and innovation of some modern authors, which
hath been much encouraged of late, because it gave
more ease and rest as to further inquiries in an
argument they could not well manage." 2
As to the new source of evidence opened up by
the decipherment of the Cuneiform inscriptions, Le-
normant says, that in none of these, so far as yet
deciphered, has anything been found indicating that
the Chaldaeo-Babylonians believed that their coun
try was the cradle of the human race.3
" But the four rivers," says our inquirer, and
he reads verses 10-14: "And a river went out of
Eden to water the garden ; and from thence it was
parted and became into four heads. The name of
the first is Pison. . . . And the name of the second
river is Gihon. . . . And the name of the third river
1 Sacred Theory of the Earth. London, 2d ed., 1691 : p. 252.
2 Ibid., p. 253.
8 Les Origines de FHistoire. Paris, 1882 : torn. ii. I, p. 120.
28 PARADISE FOUND.
is Hiddekel, . . . and the fourth river is Euphrates."
" Surely here in the fourth river we have one unde
niable landmark. However impossible it may be
satisfactorily to identify all four of the primitive riv
ers of Eden, the mention of the Euphrates at least
restricts the location of the garden to some part of
the region drained by that river."
Consulting the theologians, however, our inves
tigator finds a great variety of serious objections
urged against this short and easy method of settling
the controversy.
First, he is told that some Biblical critics have
expressed doubt as to the genuineness of the verses,
and that as earnest a defender of the Bible as Mr.
Granville Penn considered the whole passage an in
terpolation.
Secondly, he learns that Perath or Phrath, the
Hebrew name of the river, is from the older form
Buratti or Purattu, a word believed to signify " the
broad," or " the deep." 1 Of course such a descrip
tive term may well have been the name of more
than one ancient river, just as "Broad Brook" is the
name of many an American stream. Indeed, in his
learned work, " Le Berceau de 1'Espece Humaine,"
Obry shows that in ancient times Phrat, or Euphra
tes, was the name of one, or possibly two, of the
rivers of Persia.2 One of these in Pliny's time still
bore the name in the hardly changed form Ophradus.
Lenormant says he does not hesitate to consider the
Phrath of the Khorda-Avesta identical with the Per-
1 Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies? p. 169. Grill, Die Erzvater der
Menschheit, Bd. i., p. 230. In Old Persian it is Ufratu, " the fair
flowing." F. Finzi, Antickita Assira, Turin, 1872: p. 112.
2 See pp. 95, 136, 140.
THE RESULTS OF THEOLOGIANS. 29
sian river Helmend.1 Africa also had its sacred
Euphrates.2 If therefore the passage in Genesis is
genuine, and Moses wrote of the Phrath, it is not
absolutely certain what " broad " or " abounding "
river he had in mind. Moreover, in any case, the
Euphrates of Mesopotamia is not one of four equal
offshoots into which the one " river " proceeding
" out of Eden " divided itself according to the state
ment of the text. Its source is not from another
river at all, but from ordinary mountain springs.
Thirdly, it must not be forgotten, our friend is
told, that all peoples coming into a new country love
to name their new rivers and towns after the loved
and sacred ones they have left in the elder home.
The Thames of New England perpetuates the mem
ory of the Thames of Old England. " It is very
seldom indeed," says a late writer, " that a river has
no namesakes."3 Very possibly, therefore, the
Phrath of Mesopotamia may have been named for
some elder river of the antediluvian world, wher
ever that may have been. That it was so is the firm
belief of various learned writers.4
Fourthly, continue the theologians, the language
of Ezekiel xxviii. 13-19, and of Proverbs iii. 18; xi.
30, etc., shows that poetic and symbolical applica
tions of the name and images of Eden were common.
1 Origines de VHistoire, torn. ii. I, p. 99.
2 " Also there is a very sacred river in Hwida called the Euphrates
or Eufrates." — Gerald Massey, The Natural Genesis. London, 1883 :
vol. ii., p. 165.
8 " There is no improbability in supposing that there may have been
in Britain two rivers named Trisanton. On the contrary, it is very
seldom indeed that a river has no namesakes," — Henry Bradley, in
The Academy, April 28, 1883, P- 29^-
* See Grill, Die Erzvdter der Menschheit, Bd. i., pp. 239, 242. '
3O PARADISE FOUND.
And if the Hebrews named one of the water-courses
at Jerusalem Gihon, in commemoration of one of the
four Paradise rivers,1 it is not irrational to suppose
that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia may have called
their chief stream in honor of another of the four.
Lenormant, Grill, Obry, and others support this view.
They might have rendered the probability still
stronger by calling attention to the fact that the
oldest name of Babylon, Tin-tir-ki, was of the same
commemorative or symbolical character, and signi
fied " the place of the Tree of Life." 2
Finally, pursuing these curious investigations fur
ther, our plain reader finds mention in Pausanias, ii.
5, of a strange belief of the ancients, according to
which the Euphrates, after disappearing in a marsh
and flowing a long distance underground, rises again
beyond Ethiopia, and flows through Egypt as the
Nile. This reminds him of the language of Josephus,
according to which the Ganges, the Tigris, the Eu
phrates, and the Nile are all but parts of "one river
which ran round about the whole earth," — the Oke-
anos-river of the Greeks.3 And he wonders whether
the old Shemitic term from which the modern Eu
phrates is derived was not originally a name of the
general water system of the world, — a name of that
Ocean-river which Aristotle describes as rising in
the upper heavens, descending in rain upon the
earth, feeding, as Homer tells us, all fountains and
rivers and every sea, flowing through all these water-
1 Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2d ed., Bd. Hi., pp. 32I-328-
2 Lenormant, Origines de VHistoire, vol. i., p. 76. English version,
p. 85. See also Rev. O. D. Miller, " The Symbolical Geography of
the Ancients," in the American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal,
Chicago, July, 1881.
3 Compare Rev. ix. 14.
THE RESULTS OF THEOLOGIANS. 31
courses down into the great and "broad" equatorial
ocean-current which girdles the world in its embrace,
thence branching out from the further shore into
the rivers of the Underworld, to be at last fire-purged
and sublimated, and returned in purity to the upper
heavens to recommence its round.1 And just as he
is wondering over the question, he finds that some
of the Assyriologists, in their investigation of pre-
Babylonian Akkadian mythology, have found reason
to believe this surmise correct, and to say that in
that mythology the term Euphrates was applied to
" the rope of the world," " the encircling river of the
snake god of the tree of life," "the heavenly river
which surrounds the earth." 2 Furthermore, as he
turns back to the pages of Hyginus, and Manilius,
and Lucius Ampelius, and reads of the fall of the
"world-egg" at the beginning "into the river Eu
phrates," he perceives that he is in a mythologic,
and not a historic region.3 And when he lights
upon a mutilated fragment of an ancient Assyrian
inscription, in which descriptions of the visible and
invisible world are mixed up together, and in which
the river "of the life of the world " is designated by
the name " Euphrates," 4 he quickly concludes that
it will not do to take the term Phrath, or Eu-frata,
as always and everywhere referring to the historic
river of Mesopotamia.
1 See below Part V., chapter 5 : " The Quadrifurcate River."
2 The Rev. A. H. Sayce in The Academy. London, Oct. 7, 1882 :
p. 263. " Professor Sayce, after recently observing that ' in early
Akkadian mythology the mouth of the Euphrates was identified with
the River of Death,' adds, ' The Okeanos of Homer had, I believe,
its origin in this Akkadian river which coiled itself around the
world.' " — Robert Brown, Jun., F. R. S., The Myth of KirkL London.
1883 : p. 33.
8 Bryant, Analysis of Ancient Myths, vol. Hi., pp. 160-162.
* Records of the Past, x., p. 149.
32 PARADISE FOUND.
Hitherto, then, the "results" of the theologians
as to the location of Eden are purely negative and
mutually destructive. " It would be difficult," says
one of their number, "to find any subject in the
whole history of opinion which has so invited and at
the same time so completely baffled conjecture as
this. Theory after theory has been advanced, but
none has been found which satisfies the required
conditions. The site of Eden will ever rank, with
the quadrature of the circle and the interpretation
of unfulfilled prophecy, among those unsolved and
perhaps insoluble problems which possess so strange
a fascination." l
1 William A. Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge, in Smith's
Dictionary of the Bible, Art. " Eden,"
CHAPTER III.
THE RESULTS OF NON-THEOLOGICAL SCHOLARS I NAT
URALISTS, ETHNOLOGISTS, ETC.
// is useless to speculate on thit subject. — CHARLES DARWIN.
THE location of the cradle of the human race is as
much a problem for the ethnologist and anthropolo
gist as it is for the theologian. The archaeologist,
the zoologist, and even the biologist, if at all broad
and philosophical in their inquiries, cannot ignore
the high interest of the questions, Was there for
the human race one primitive centre of distribution ?
and, if so, Where was it located ?
Thirty years ago the pretentious American work
by Nott and Gliddon, entitled " The Types of Man
kind," 1 — a work written in opposition to the doc
trine of the unity of the human race, — attracted
unusual attention to the former of these questions.
The teaching therein put forth was that there are
very many types or varieties of men without genea
logical connection with each other, and that there
fore a great number of primitive centres of distribu
tion must be assumed. The avowed prejudices of
the projectors of the work against certain races, par
ticularly the African, would have rendered the in
fluence of the work upon the scientific world ex
tremely slight, had not contributions of some value
from Dr. S. G. Morton, and Professor Louis Agassiz
1 Philadelphia and London, 1854.
34 PARADISE FOUND.
been incorporated with it. As it was, it gave Eu
ropean ethnologists occasion to form and express
very uncomplimentary conceptions of American rep
resentatives of ethnological research.1 Fortunate
ly these crude beginners of the science have had
no influential successors of their own sort in this
country, and but obscure or half-hearted disciples
in any other.2 The polygeny of the race has at
present no respectable support. Even the author of
the latest and perhaps ablest of the works on the
Preadamite Hypothesis remarks, " The plural origin
of mankind is a doctrine now almost entirely super
seded. All schools admit the probable descent of
all races from a common stock." 3 To the second
question, therefore, the attention of the scientific
and archaeological world is steadily gravitating.
Given one primeval point of departure for the race,
where shall that point of departure be sought ?
The answers which recent biologists, naturalists,
and ethnologists have given to this problem are
hardly less numerous or less conflicting than are
the solutions proposed by theologians. Of these
1 Such references as the following are not uncommon : " Uner-
lasslich bleibt die Behauptung eines einzigen Ausgangsortes s'ammt-
licher Menschenrassen, im Gegensatze zur Anthropologenschule unter
den Amerikanern, die vielleicht urn ihr Gewissen iiber die vormalige
Negersklaverei und den Rassenmord der Indianer zu beruhigen, in
neuster Zeit iiber hundert Menschenarten, nicht Menschenrassen,
iiberhaupt so viele geschaffen hat als Volkertypen sich aufstellen lassen"
etc. — O. Peschel, in Ausland, 1869, p. mo. Cited in Caspari, Die
Urgeschichte der Menschheit. 2d ed., Leipsic, 1877, vol. i., p. 241.
2 See Simonin, L'Homme Americain. Paris, 1870: p. 12. A. Re-
ville, Les Religions des Peuples non-civilises . Paris, 1883 : vol. i., p. 196.
3 Alexander Winchell, Preadamites ; or a Demonstration of the
Existence of Men before Adam. Chicago, 1880 : p. 297. One of the
latest and most authoritative criticisms and refutations of Agassiz's
polygenism is found in Quatrefages, The Human Race. N. Y., 1879 :
chap. xiv.
OTHER RESULTS. 35
answers Professor Zoeckler, in a late work, enumer
ates ten, each having the support of eminent scien
tific names.1 In latitude they range from Green
land to Central Africa, and in longitude from Amer
ica to Central Asia. Of the whole number, the two
which seem to command the widest and weight
iest support are, first, the hypothesis that " Lemu-
ria " — a wholly imaginary, now submerged prehis
toric continent under the northern portion of the
Indian Ocean — was the " mother-region " of the
race ; and, secondly, that it was in the heart of Cen
tral Asia.
The former of these sites is the one supported
by Haeckel, Caspari, Peschel, and many others.2
Though less positive, Darwin and Lyell seem favor
able to the same location or to one in the adjoining
portion of Africa. Most of the recent maps of the
progressive dispersion of the race over the globe
have been constructed in accordance with this the
ory.3 Perhaps the best popular summary of the
arguments in its favor is that found in Oscar
Peschel's " Races of Men." 4
But while biological speculation, especially in the
hands of Darwinists, has strongly inclined toward
the chief habitat of the ape tribes in its attempts
to find man's primitive point of departure, compar
ative philologists, mythologists, and archaeological
1 The Cross of Christ. Translated by Evans. London, 1877. Ap
pendix iii., p. 389.
2 Ernst Haeckel, The Pedigree of Man, and other Essays. London,
1883 : PP- 73-8o. Otto Kuntze, Phytogeogenesis. Leipsic, 1884 : p.
52, note.
3 See Caspari's in Die Urgeschichte der Menschheit, at the close of
vol. i. ; Kracher's Ethnographische Weltkarte in Novara Expedition,
Vienna, 1875 » Winchell's in his Preadamites, p. I.
4 New York, Appletons, pp. 26-34.
36 PARADISE FOUND.
ethnographers have of late very strongly tended
to place the cradle of mankind on the lofty plateau
of Pamir in Central Asia. For these the eminent
French anthropologist, Quatrefages, is well entitled
to speak.
We know [says this savant] that in Asia there is a
vast region bounded on the south and south-west by the
Himalayas, on the west by the Bolor mountains, on the
north-west by the Alla-Tau, on the north by the Altai
range and its off-shoots, on the east by the Kingkhan, on
the south and south-east by the Felina and Kwen-lun.
Judging of it by what exists at the present day, this great
central region might be regarded as having included the
cradle of the human race.
In fact, the three fundamental types of all the races
of mankind are represented in the populations grouped
around this region. The negro races are the furthest re
moved from it, but have nevertheless marine stations,
in which they are found pure or mixed, from the Kiussiu
to the Andaman Islands. On the continent they have
mingled their blood with nearly all the inferior castes and
classes of the two Gangetic peninsulas ; they are still
found pure in each of them ; they ascend as far as Nepal,
and, according to Elphinstone, spread to the west as far
as the Persian Gulf and Lake Zareh. The yellow race,
pure, or mixed here and there with white elements, seems
alone to occupy the area in question. The circumference
of this region is peopled by it to the north, the east, the
south-east, and the west. In the south it is more mixed,
but it none the less forms an important element of the
population. The white race, by its allophylian repre
sentatives, seems to have disputed the possession of even
the central area itself with the yellow race. In early
times we find the Yu-Tchi, the U-Suns, to the north of
Hoang-Ho ; and at the present day in Little Thibet, in
Eastern Thibet, small islands of white populations have
OTHER RESULTS. 37
been pointed out. The Miao-Tse' occupy the mountain
ous regions of China ; the Siaputhes are proof against
all attacks in the gorges of Bolor. On the confines of
this area we find to the east the Ainos and the Japanese
of high caste, the Tinguians of the Philippine Islands ;
to the south the Hindus. To the south-west and west,
the white element, pure or mixed, is completely predomi
nant. No other region on the face of the globe presents
similar reunion of the extreme types of the human race
distributed around a common centre. This fact of itself
might suggest to the naturalist the conjecture which I
have expressed above ; but we may appeal to other con
siderations.
One of the weightiest of these is drawn from philol
ogy. The three fundamental forms of human language
are found in the same regions and in analogous connec
tions. In the centre and the south-east of our area the
monosyllabic languages are represented by the Chinese,
the Annamite, the Siamese, and the Thibetan. As agglu
tinative languages, we find, from the north-east to the
north-west, the group of the Ugro-Japanese ; in the south
that of the Dravidians and the Malays ; and in the west
the Turkish languages. Lastly, Sanscrit with its deriva
tives, and the Iranian languages, represent, in the south
and south-west, the inflectional languages. With the lin
guistic types accumulated around this central region of
Asia all human languages are connected, either by their
vocabulary or their grammar. Some of these Asiatic lan
guages resemble very closely languages spoken in regions
far removed, or separated from the area in question by
very different languages.
Lastly, it is from Asia, again, that our earliest-tamed
domestic animals have come. Isidore Geoffrey- Saint-
Hilaire is entirely agreed on this point with Bureau de
la Malle.
Thus, taking into account only the present epoch,
38 PARADISE FOUND.
everything leads us back to this central plateau, or rather
this vast inclosure. Here, we are inclined to say to our
selves, the first human beings appeared, and multiplied
down to the moment when the populations overflowed
like a bowl which is too full, and poured themselves out
in human waves in all directions.1
This view of the location of the first centre of the
race is very widely accepted. It has the support of
many great names. To its establishment contribu
tions have been made by scholars in a great variety
of fields. Among them may be mentioned Lassen,
Burnouf, Ewald, Renan, Obry, D' Eckstein, Hofer,
Senart, Maspero, Lenormant, etc. Perhaps the most
important single treatise representing the view is
Obry's "Cradle of the Human Species," — a work
of singular interest to every scholar.2
But the latest writers on the question are by no
means confined to the two locations just mentioned.
The difficulty of accounting for the first advent of
human beings in America, without supposing in
early times a closer land-connection between the
eastern and western hemispheres in the intertrop-
ical regions than now exists, has led not a few eth
nologists to postulate a lost Atlantis, including per
haps the Canary and Madeira Islands, or the Azores,
1 The Human Species, pp. 175-177. — Quatrefages' noteworthy
suggestion as to the possibility of a modification of the above con
clusion in consequence of the revelations of recent paleontological
researches will be noticed in Part III., chapter 7.
2 Le Berceau de PEspece Humaine selon les Indiens, les Perses et
les Hebreux. Amiens, 1858. See also Lenormant, Origines de rHis-
toire. Paris, 1882 : torn. ii. I, pp. 41, 144, 145. (Translated in part
in The Contemporary Review, Sept. 1881.) Fragments cosmogoniques
de Berose, pp. 300-333. Renan, Histoire generale des Langues Semi-
tiques, pp. 475-484. Wilford, Asiatic Researches, vol. vi., pp. 455-536,
and the following volumes.
OTHER RESULTS. 39
or located to the North or South of them, and to
place in it the fountain head of the streams of popu
lation which colonized both the Old and the New
World.1
Another location lately advanced with great con
fidence and supported with remarkable acuteness
and learning is that advocated by Dr. Friedrich
Delitzsch in his valuable work entitled " Wo lag
das Paradies ? " 2 This site is on the Euphrates be
tween Bagdad and Babylon.3 In the author's con
struction the "four rivers" are the great canal west
of the Euphrates, called by the Greeks the Pallaco-
1 Unger, Die versunkene Insel Atlantis. Vienna, 1860. An Amer
ican work in advocacy of this theory is Ignatius Donnelly's Atlan
tis : The Antediluvian World. New York, 1882. In Europe the
hypothesis has been represented as largely abandoned. See Engler,
Die Entwickelungsgeschichte der Pflanzenwelt. Leipsic, 1879 • v°i'
i., p. 82. But a new modification has since appeared in the work of
M. Berlioux of Lyons : Les Atlantes. Histoire de ? Atlantis et de
V Atlas primitify ou Introduction a Fhistoire de C Europe. Paris, 1883.
2 Wo lag das Paradies ? Eine biblisch-assyriologische Studie. Mil
zahlreichen assyriologischen Beitrdgen zur biblischen Lander- nnd Vol-
kerlmnde und einer Karte Babylo niens. Von Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch,
Professor der Assyriologie an der Universitat Leipzig. Leipsic,
1881. The author is a son of the well-known Biblical scholar Pro
fessor Franz Delitzsch, and is himself eminent as an Assyriologist.
8 Compare the language of his fellow-student in Assyriology, Pro
fessor Felice Finzi : " Mentre a cercare la culla degli Ariani dobbi-
amo volgerci ad Oriente, agli Uttara-Kuru degli Indiani, al mitico
paradiso degli nomini del monte Meru, all' Airyanem Vaedjo degli
Irani, al regno di Udyana presso al Caschmir ; mentre in qualche
gruppo del sistema uralo-altaico dee forse indicarsi il centre di forma-
zione della famiglia turanica, e la orografia del Caucaso potra forse
sola determinare il sito piu opportuno per lo sviluppo delle tribii che
se ne attestano autottone ; i Semiti ci si mostrano figli di quella terra
ove si sono svolte le pagine piu belle della loro storia. E la forse in
un angolo di questo paese ricco un tempo dello splendore di una na«
tura lussureggiante che la tribii semita si formo." — Ricerche per lo
Studio deir Antichita Assira. Torino, 1872 : p. 433.
4<D PARADISE FOUND.
pas, the Shat-en-Nil, and the lower Tigris and Eu
phrates. But despite the conceded ability of the
plea, there seems at present little prospect that it
will secure acceptance among scholars. The distin
guished Theodor Noeldeke, in a recent review, while
cordially praising the learning and ingenuity of the
work, professes himself unmoved by its arguments.1
Similarly a critic in this country writes : " Unfortu
nately for the theory so powerfully advanced, almost
all the linguistic evidences by which it is supported
are still of doubtful value, the etymology of the
Babylonian names in most cases, and the reading in
some, being disputed by high authorities in this ob
scure field of inquiry. Were the linguistic points
proved, it would be hard to resist the power of the
argument, in spite of various difficulties arising from
the scanty text of Genesis itself. As it is, although
all other solutions of the knotty Biblical problem
may be subject to still graver objections, the follow
ing questions militate too strongly against Professor
Delitzsch's solution : Why, if the stream of Eden be
the middle Euphrates, is it left unnamed in the nar
rative, though it is certain that the Hebrews were
perfectly familiar both with the middle and the up
per course of that river ? Why, if the Pison and
Gihon designate the canals Pallacopas and Shat-en-
Nil, are they said to compass lands which the canals
only traverse ? If the lower Tigris be meant by the
Hiddekel, why is this river described as flowing in
front of Assyria, which lay above the central Meso-
1 " Seine Ansicht zu begriinden wendet er sehr viel Gelehrsamkeit
und noch mehr Scharfsinn auf, aber ich fiirchte umsonst. Nach sorg-
faltiger Priifung muss ich festhalten an einer Lage des Paradieses in
'Utopian,' wie er etwas spottisch sagt." — Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenliindischen Gesellschaft^ 1882, p. 174.
OTHER RESULTS. 41
potamian lowland asserted to be Eden ? How should
a writer familiar with the whole course of the Tigris
deem its lower part a branch of the Euphrates ?
Why should Cush, a name which commonly desig
nated Ethiopia, have been used by the narrator in a
sense in which it nowhere else occurs in the Scrip
tures, without the least further definition ? Why,
on the other hand, is Havilah, if the Arabian border
land so well known to the Hebrews be meant, so
fully described by its products ? Who tells us that
the gold, the bdellium, and the shoham of Babylonia
were also characteristic of the adjoining Havilah ?
But whether these objections, in the present stage
of Assyriological studies, be fatal to the theory of
Professor Delitzsch or not, we have no hesitation in
saying that his dissertation, amplified as it is by
supplementary treatises on the ancient geography
and ethnology of the Mesopotamian and neighbor
ing countries, of Canaan, Egypt, and Elam, is a per
fect treasury of knowledge, — made most accessible
by excellent indexes, — and probably the most bril
liant production in all Biblico-Assyriological litera
ture." !
At the present writing, the latest monograph
upon the subject is the one just published in the
"Revue de 1'Histoire des Religions," from the pen of
M. Beauvois.2 This locates the Eden of ethnic tra
ditions in America, and ascribes to the Keltic race
1 The Nation. New York, Mar. 15, 1883. See Lenormant's criti
cisms in Les Origines de VHistoire, torn. ii. ; and Halevy's in the Revue
Critique, Paris, 1881, pp. 457-463, 477~485-
2 " L'Elysee Transatlantique et 1'Eden Occidental," par E. Beau
vois. Revue, Paris, 1883, pp. 273 ss. See also " L'Elysee des Mexi-
cains compare a celui des Celtes," by the same author, in same Re
view, 1884.
42 PARADISE FOUND.
no small influence upon the Greco-Roman mythol
ogy in the development of such ideas as those per
taining to the Gardens of the Hesperides, the Isles
of the Blessed, etc. The site advocated is not new,
though the line of argument is fresh and scholarly.
The hypothesis that the cradle of the race is to be
sought in America has before found advocacy at the
hands of J. Klaproth, Gobineau, and others.
That this, however, is not to be the last and only
word on the subject is evident from the fact that, in
a huge work just from the press, an English writer
says : " If there be an earthly original for the heav
enly Eden, it will be found in equatorial Africa, the
land of seething, swarming, multitudinous, and co
lossal life, where the mother nature grew great with
her latest race ; the lair in which the lusty breeder
brought forth her black, barbarian brood, and put
forth for them such a warm, welling bosom as can
not be paralleled elsewhere on earth. This was the
world of wet and heaven of heat ; the land of equal
day and dark ; that supplied the Two Truths of
Uarti (Egyptian) ; the top of the world ; the very
nipple (Kepd) of the breast of earth, which is there
one vast streaming fount of moisture quick with
life. So surely as a topographical Meru is found
in Habesh, so surely is the Earthly Paradise, the
original of the mythical which was carried forth
over the world by the migrations from Kam, to be
found there, if at all." 1
1 The Natural Genesis, containing an attempt to recover and recon
stitute the lost Origins of the Myths and Mysteries, Types and Sym~
bols. Religion and Language, ivith Egypt for the mouthpiece, and Af
rica as the birthplace. By Gerald Massey. London, 1883 : vol. ii., p.
162. It is impossible to understand how Mr. Massey reconciles the
foregoing language with that used on p. 28 of the same volume, where
OTHER RESULTS. 43
In fine, so resultless seem all discussions and in
vestigations in this field that in his work on " The
Patriarchs of Humanity " Dr. Julius Grill, like Noel-
deke, prefers to locate lost Paradise "in Utopia,"
and to deny to it all historic reality.1 Evidently the
naturalists and the ethnologists, the comparative
mythologists, and Kultnrgeschichtschreiber, have not
yet solved the problem. Their " mother-region " of
the human race is as elusive and Protean as are any
of the terrestrial Edens of theology, or of legend,
or of poetry.
Thus far, then, all search has been fruitless. Par
adise is indeed lost. The explorer cannot find it;
the theologian, the naturalist, and the archaeologist
have all sought it in vain. Representative voices
out of every camp are heard confessing utter igno
rance as to the region where human history began.
" The problem," says Professor Ebers, " remains un
answered."
he speaks of the crooked sword Khepsh, " that turned every way, and
by its revolution formed the circle of Eden, or, as it was represented,
kept the way of the Tree of Life, the POLE, where the happy garden
was planted as the primary creation, which was the home of the pri
meval pair." But in the language of The Nation (June 26, 1884)
the work is " an enormous conglomeration of facts set down with en
tire indifference to scientific principles of comparison, . . . and, as
far as the author's aim is concerned, absolutely worthless."
1 " Der Ort, wohin die althebraische Ueberlieferung die Wiege des
Menschengeschlechtes verlegt . . . ist also nicht auf der Erde gele-
gen, und gehort dem Bereich der Wirklichkeit nicht an." — Grill, Die
Erzvater der Menschheit. Leipzig, 1875 : Abth. I., p. 242.
PART SECOND.
. ,=s rt ••;•'} r: jfjfrmwtvj !>>' j>.Te «« 5t-;j«»y«j ;;' r
A NEW HYPOTHESIS.
CHAP.
I. THE HYPOTHESIS AND ITS ADMISSIBILITY.
II. ITS EFFECT UPON THE PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION.
When Newton said " Hypotheses non fingo " he did not mean that he deprived
himself of the facilities of investigation afforded by assuming in the first instance
what he hoped ultimately to be able to prove. Without such assumptions science
could never have attained its present state. — JOHN STUART MILL.
In scientific investigations it is permitted to invent any hypothesis, and if it ex
plains various large and independent classes of facts it rises to the rank of a well-
grounded theory. — CHARLES DARWIN.
CHAPTER I.
THE HYPOTHESIS.
The golden guess
Is morning star to the full round of truth.
TENNYSON.
FROM the foregoing chapters it would seem as if
nearly every imaginable site for the Gan-Eden of
Genesis had been proposed, examined, and found un
available. One, however, remains, — a region of rar
est interest in astronomical, physical, and historical
geography, — the natural centre of the only historic
hemisphere. Considering the fascination of the sub
ject and the inexhaustible ingenuity that has been
expended upon it, it seems remarkable that it should
be left to the closing years of the nineteenth cen
tury to bring forward and seriously to test the prop
osition THAT THE CRADLE OF THE HUMAN RACE,
THE EDEN OF PRIMITIVE TRADITION, WAS SITUATED
AT THE NORTH POLE, IN A COUNTRY SUBMERGED
AT THE TIME OF THE DELUGE.1
1 As to the alleged "newness" of the above hypothesis, it is
proper to say that something like a year elapsed after its full accept
ance and public announcement by the writer before he could find any
evidence that it had ever been entertained or advocated by any other
person. He then met with the allusion in the passage quoted from
Bishop Huet as a motto to chapter second of the preceding part,
and with a similar allusion in an anonymous article in Dickens' All
the Year Round. Whether these were more than rhetorical flourishes
he was long in doubt. Not until after the manuscript of the present
work had been completed, packed, and addressed to the publishers,
48 PARADISE FOUND.
This is the hypothesis which it is proposed in the
following pages to examine and according to the
evidences to adjudge. We propose to make the test
both strict and comprehensive. Hypotheses, how
ever promising, must be brought face to face with
reality. Ours, like its numberless predecessors,
must be rejected if the solid facts of any of the fol
lowing sciences show that it is inadmissible : —
1. General Geogony, or the science of the origin
of the earth ;
2. Mathematical or Astronomical Geography, par
ticularly its teachings as to the inhabitableness or
uninhabitableness of the circumpolar region with
respect to light ;
3. Physiographical Geology, particularly its teach
ings as to the probability or improbability of the
former existence and subsequent submersion of a
circumpolar country ;
4. Prehistoric Climatology, particularly with ref
erence to the temperature at the Pole at the time of
the beginning of human history ;
5. Paleontological Botany ;
6. Paleontological Zoology ;
7. Paleontological Anthropology and Ethnology ;
and
8. Comparative Mythology, viewed as the science
was the doubt resolved by finding in an anonymous English magazine
article of more than thirty years ago this brief statement : " Pastellus
will have it that Paradise was under the North Pole." Who Pastel-
lus was and what he wrote upon the subject remain to be investigated.
Suffice to say that up to the date of this writing the author has found
no book or tractate in which the above hypothesis has ever been
advocated. This fact renders some of the mottoes prefixed to the
chapters farther on remarkably significant and impressive. In many
cases their authors express truths which they themselves did not
perceive.
PROPOSED HYPOTHESIS. 49
of the oldest traditionary beliefs and memories of
mankind. On the contrary, if the hypothesis is ca
pable of meeting this eightfold test, and especially
if we can show, not only that it is admissible, but
also that in greater or less degree it is supported by
the positive evidence of the facts in nearly all of
these fields of knowledge, we shall afford a much
more complete and convincing verification than is
at all usual in matters of prehistoric research.
4
CHAPTER II.
IMPORTANT NEW FEATURES AT ONCE INTRODUCED
INTO THE PROBLEM OF THE SITE OF EDEN. SIG
NIFICANCE OF THESE FOR A VALID SOLUTION.
It appears, then, to be a condition of a genuinely scientific hypothesis that it be
not destined always to remain an hypothesis, but be certain to be either proved or
disproved by that comparison with observed facts which is termed verification- • . .
Verification is proof '; if the supposition accords with the phenomena there needs
no other evidence of it. — JOHN STUART MILL.
IT is evident, on a moment's thought, that our
hypothesis immediately and materially modifies the
whole problem of the location of Paradise.
Given a prehistoric circumpolar continent at the
North Pole as the cradle of the race, what must
have been marked and memorable features of that
primitive abode ?
1. To the first men there would have been but
one day and one night in a year.
2. The stars, instead of seeming to rise and set,
would have had an apparently horizontal motion
round and round the observer from left to right.
3. The Pole, the unmoving centre-point of the
heavens directly overhead, would naturally have
seemed to be the top of the world, the true heaven,
the changeless seat of the supreme, all-ruling God.
And if, accordingly, through all the long lifetime of
the ante-diluvian world, the circumpolar sky was to
human thought the true abode of God, the oldest
post-diluvian peoples, though scattered down the
EFFECT ON PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION. 51
sides of the globe half or two thirds the distance to
the equator, could not easily have forgotten that at
the centre and true top of the rotating sky was the
throne of its great Creator, and that there, in the
far North, was " the sacred quarter " of the world.
4. Standing at the Pole of the earth, an observer
would be not only directly under the centre of the
celestial hemisphere, but also directly on the centre
of the surface of the terrestrial hemisphere. There,
and there alone, the heavenly bodies would move,
in horizontal planes, round and round him every
where at an apparently equal distance, and he would
seem to himself to stand on the one precise centre-
point of the entire earth. Every departure of a few
miles in any direction from this polar position would
at once confirm this first impression. If, therefore,
primeval Eden was at the Pole, the descendants of
the first man, going away from such an original
country, could hardly have failed to remember it as
the centre of all lands, the omphalos of the whole
earth.
5. Supposing the first man to have been located
in the central and most elevated portion of the hy
pothetical Eden-land, the streams there originating
and flowing seaward would have flowed, not in one
but in various opposite directions toward all the car
dinal points of the horizon. Moreover, all of these
streams being obviously fed, not by each other, but
by the rain from heaven, it would not have required
a very powerful imagination to conceive of them as
parts of a finer and more celestial stream whose
head-springs were in the sky.1 If, finally, the streams
1 Compare the poetic representation of " the river of God," in Ps.
Ixv. 9, 10. Also the following : " Aristotle, I remember, in his Me-
52 PARADISE FOUND.
flowing in the opposite directions grew at length into
four opposite-flowing rivers, — flumina principalia, as
many old theologians have called them, — dividing
the circumpolar land into four nearly equal quarters,
it would have constituted a never-to-be-forgotten
feature of that first home of men.
6. In another chapter we shall expose the base
lessness of the popular impression that at the Pole
six months of every twelve are spent in darkness,
and shall show that, on the contrary, less than one
fifth of the year is so spent, while more than four
fifths are spent in light. This being true, a primi
tive abode in that part of the world would have been
remembered by the descendants of the first man as
preeminently a land of beauty, — preeminently the
home of the sun. Moreover, Arctic explorers find
it impossible to describe the nocturnal splendors of
the Aurora Borealis in those regions, — the whole
top of the globe ofttimes seeming veiled in and
over-canopied with quivering curtains and banners
and streamers of living, leaping flame ; — it is there
fore easy to believe that, once exiled from such a
home, mankind would ever have looked back to it as
to an abode of unearthly and preternatural efful
gence, — a home fit for the occupancy of gods and
holy immortals.
7. Finally, assuming the prevalence of an equable
tropical temperature, we find the biological conditions
of the region — such as the extraordinary preva
lence of daylight, the intenser terrestrial magnetism,
teors, speaking of the course of the Vapours, saith, there is a River
in the Air, constantly flowing betwixt the Heavens and the Earth,
made by the ascending and descending Vapours." — Burnet, Sacred
Theory of the Earth, p. 226.
EFFECT ON PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION. 53
and the unparalleled electric forces which feed the
Northern Lights — all combining to raise a high
probability that if ever such a land as we have sup
posed existed, it must have presented forms of life
surpassing those with which we are familiar ; a flora
and fauna of almost unimagined vigor and luxuriance
of development. Under such conditions men them
selves may well have had a stature and strength and
longevity never attained since the Deluge, which
destroyed "the world that then was," and imme
diately or ultimately occasioned the translocation of
the seed of our new post-diluvian humanity into the
cold and barren and desolate regions of the North
ern Temperate zone. And if the first men were of
the stature and strength and longevity supposed,
how certainly would traditions of the fact linger in
the memory of mankind long after its exile from its
earlier and happier home !
Glancing back now over these various points, one
instantly sees that they present conditions of hu
man existence totally unlike the conditions of life
as we know it, or as it has ever been known in what
are called historic ages. They necessarily modify
in the profoundest manner the whole problem of the
site of Eden. No solution ever heretofore presented
exposed itself to refutation at so many points. None
ever before postulated so extraordinary an adjust
ment of both heavens and earth. None ever before
required, in order to its establishment, so incredibly
wide a concurrency of testimony. Against no other
has it ever been possible for the very stars in their
courses to fight. If false, it demands of human tra
dition shadowy recollections of world - conditions
which have never existed in human experience. An
54 PARADISE FOUND.
hypothesis so peculiarly difficult must surely break
down, if it be not true. Promising the reader, there
fore, not a new ignis-fatuus chase, but at least the
satisfaction of a definite result as respects one hy
pothesis, we cordially invite his critical and patient
attention to the facts to be presented in the follow
ing chapters.
PART THIRD.
THE HYPOTHESIS SCIENTIFICALLY TESTED
AND CONFIRMED.
CHAP.
I. THE TESTIMONY OF SCIENTIFIC GEOGONY.
II. THE TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY.
III. THE TESTIMONY OF PHYSIOGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY.
IV. THE TESTIMONY OF PREHISTORIC CLIMATOLOGY.
V. THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL BOTANY.
VI. THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL ZOOLOGY.
VII. THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL ANTHROPOL
OGY AND ETHNOLOGY.
VIII. CONCLUSION OF THIS PART.
It follows . . . that man, issuing from a "mother-region " still undetermined, but
which a number of considerations indicate to have been in the North, has radiated
in several directions ; that his migrations have been constantly from North to
South. — M. LE MARQUIS G. DE SAPORTA, in Popular Science Monthly, October,
1883, p. 753-
Eine jede Reise, welche nach der eisumgiirteten Inselwelt im Norden Amerikas
unternommen wurde, weiss von Anzeichen der ehemaligen Anwesenheit eines Volkes
zu erzahlen, welches Lander bewohnte, die heute kein menschlicher Fuss mehr zu
betreten scheint. — DR. F. BOAS, in Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde in
Berlin, Bd. xviii. (1883), p. 118.
CHAPTER I.
THE TESTIMONY OF GEOGONY, OR THE SCIENCE OF
THE ORIGIN OF THE EARTH.
Les lots gen&rales de la g&ogtnie favorisent <fzinefa(on remarquable Fhypothhe
dont nous venons d?ebaucher les traits. — COUNT SAPORTA.
COULD it once be proven that the Arctic termi
nus of the earth has always been the ice-bound re
gion which it now is, and which for thousands of
years it has been, it would of course be useless to
entertain for a moment the hypothesis that the cra
dle of the human race was there located. Prob
ably the popular impression that from the beginning
of the world the far North has been the region of
unendurable cold has been one of the chief reasons
why our hypothesis is so late in claiming attention.
At the present time, however, so far as this difficulty
is concerned, scientific studies have abundantly pre
pared the way for the new theory.
That the earth is a slowly cooling body is a doc
trine now all but universally accepted. In saying
this we say nothing for or against the so-called neb
ular hypothesis of the origin of the world, for both
friends and foes of this unproven hypothesis believe
in what is termed the secular cooling or refrigera
tion of the earth. All authorities in this field hold
and teach that the time was when the slowly solid
ifying planet was too hot to support any form of life,
and that only at some particular time in the cooling
$8 PARADISE FOUND.
process was there a temperature reached which was
adapted to the necessities of living things.
On what portion of the earth's surface, now,
would this temperature first be reached ? Or would
it everywhere be reached at the same time ?
These are most interesting questions, and the
writer has often marveled that in scientific treatises
on the cooling globe he could nowhere find them
formally discussed. Granting, however, a uniform
interior heat and a uniform loss of it in the mode
of superficial radiation in all directions into space,
it is certain that if these were the only factors in
the problem the cooling process would affect every
part of the surface in a uniform manner, and we
might confidently infer that the temperature com
patible with organic life was reached at the same
time at all points of the earth's surface. But the
factors named are not the only ones of the problem.
In those far-off geologic ages the heat received from
the great central furnace of our system, the sun,
cannot have been less than at the present time.
Some astronomers and geologists claim that it was
greater.1 In any case, therefore, as early as the time
when the earth's atmosphere became penetrable by
the rays of the sun, local differences of temperature
must have been produced at the base of the atmos
phere, whether the body of the globe was as yet
crusted over or not. Then as now, viewed apart
from air and water currents, every particular spot on
the surface of the globe must have had a tempera
ture determined, first by the fixed and uniform in
herent heat of the earth-mass, and secondly by the
varying quantity of heat received from the sun. But
i See Winchell, World-Life, pp. 484-490.
THE TESTIMONY OF GEOGONY. 59
the difference between the solar heat received at a
point under the equator and that received at a point
at the pole cannot have been less in those ages than
at the present time ; and this incessant increment
of the equatorial heat of the earth by the direct rays
of the sun suggests at once the portions of the globe
to which we must look if we would find the regions
which first became cool enough to sustain organic
life. Then as now the polar regions must have
been cooler than the equatorial, and hence, as far as
the teachings of theoretical geogony can be trusted,
the conclusion is inevitable that there, to wit, in the
polar regions, life first became possible.1
The bearing of this result upon our central thesis
is at once obvious. We asked the geologist this
question : " Is the hypothesis of a primeval polar
Eden admissible ? " Looking at the slowly cooling
earth alone, he replies, " Eden conditions have prob
ably at one time or another been found everywhere
upon the surface of the earth. Paradise may have
been anywhere." Looking at the cosmic environ
ment, however, he adds, " But while Paradise may
have been anywhere, the first portions of the earth's
surface sufficiently cool to present the conditions
of Eden life were assuredly at the Poles."
1 The similar or identical reasonings of Professor Philip Spiller
were unknown to me when the foregoing was written. See the fol
lowing : Die Weltschopfung vom Standpunkte der heutigen Wissen-
schaft. Mil neuen Untersuchungen, 1868, 2d ed., 1873. Die Entste-
hung der Welt imd die Einheit der Naturkrdfte. Populdre Kosmogo-
nie, 1872. Die Urkraft des Weltalls nach ihrem Wesen und Wirken
auf alien Naturgebieten. Berlin, 1879. In Professor Otto Kuntze's
latest work, Phytogeogenesis : Die vorweltliche Entwickehing der Erd~
kruste und der Pflanzen, Leipsic, 1884, 1 also find traces of a recog
nition of the truth above set forth. See pp. 51, 52, 53, 60, of the work.
CHAPTER II.
THE TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY.
The nights are never so dark at the Pole as in other regions, for the •moon and
stars seem to possess twice as much light and effulgence. In addition, there is a
continuous light in the North, the varied shades and play of which are amongst
the strangest phenomena of nature. — RAMBOSSON'S Astronomy.
The fact which gives the phenomenon of the polar aurora its greatest impor
tance is that the earth becomes self-luminous ; that, besides the light which as a
planet it receives from the central body, it shows a capability of sustaining a lu
minous process proper to itself, — HUMBOLDT.
WE are apt to think of an unbroken night of six
months at the Pole. Eminent scientific authorities
speak as if this conception were correct. Thus Pro
fessor Geikie, in his admirable new manual of Geol
ogy, writing of the Arctic flora of the Miocene age,
says, "When we remember that this vegetation
grew luxuriantly within 8° 15' of the North Pole,
in a region which is in darkness for half of the year y
... we can realize the difficulty of the problem in
the distribution of climate which these facts present
to the geologist." *•
In like manner Sir Charles Lyell, discussing the
question of the possibility of whales reaching the
supposed open sea at the Pole, says, " They could
pass under considerable barriers of ice, provided
there were "openings here and there; and so they
may, perhaps, reach a more open sea near the Pole,
1 Text-book of Geology. By Archibald Geikie, LL. D., F. R. S
London, 1882 : p. 869.
TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY. 6l
and find sustenance there during a day of more than
five months1 duration." 1
From such representations as these the reader
naturally carries away the impression that daylight
lasts at the Pole somewhat over five months, while
all the rest of the year the region is shrouded in
darkness. Were this true, it would certainly be an
unpromising region in which to search for the ter
restrial Paradise.
Fortunately for our hypothesis, this conception of
the duration of the polar night is very far from true.
The half-yearly reign of darkness exists only in the
uninstructed imagination. Astronomical geography
teaches that, as respects daylight, the polar regions
are and always have been the most favored portions
of the globe. As early a popularizer of natural sci
ence as the Rev. Thomas Dick set forth the real
facts as follows : " Under the Poles, where the dark
ness of night would continue six months without in
termission if there were no refraction, total dark
ness does not prevail one half of this period. When
the sun sets at the North Pole, about the 2$d of
September, the inhabitants (if any) enjoy a perpet
ual aurora till he has descended eighteen degrees
below the horizon. In his course through the eclip
tic, the sun is two months before he can reach this
point, during which time there is a perpetual twi
light. In two months more he arrives again at the
same point, namely, eighteen degrees below the ho
rizon, when a new twilight commences, which is
continually increasing in brilliancy for other two
months, at the end of which the body of this lumi
nary is seen rising in all its glory. So that in this
1 Principles of Geology, New York ed., vol. i., p. 246.
62 • PARADISE FOUND.
region the light of day is enjoyed in a greater or
less degree for ten months, without interruption by
the effects of atmospheric refraction ; and during
the two months when the influence of the solar light
is entirely withdrawn, the moon is shining above the
horizon for two half months without intermission ;
and thus it happens that no more than two separate
fortnights are passed in total darkness, and this
darkness is alleviated by the light of the stars and
the frequent coruscations of the Aurora Borealis.
Hence it appears that there are no portions of our
globe which enjoy throughout the year so large a
portion of the solar light as these northern re
gions." 1
Striking as is this account of the polar day, it is
noteworthy that experience has repeatedly shown
that the actual duration of light in high latitudes
exceeds even the calculations of the astronomers.
Thus, in the spring of 1873, the officers of the Aus
trian expedition, under Lieutenants Weyprecht and
Payer, were surprised to behold the sun three days
before the date on which he was expected to rise.
A late writer thus states the case : " In the latitude
(79° 1S! N.) in which the Tegethoff was lying, the
sun ought to reappear above the horizon on the iQth
of February ; but, owing to an effect of refraction,
due to the low temperature prevailing, — 30° R., the
explorers were able to salute its rays three days ear
lier." 2
Lieutenant Payer's own account is as follows :
"Though the sun did not return to our latitude (78°
1 Works of Thomas Dick, LL. £>., The Practical Astronomer, ch.
ii. Hartford, vol. ii., second half, p. 30.
2 Recent Expeditions in Eastern Polar Seas. London, 1882 : p. 83
TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY. 63
15' N., 71° 38' E. long.) till the iQth of February,
we were able to greet his beams three days previous
to that date, owing to the strong refraction of i° 40'
which accompanied a temperature of — 30° R." 1
Still more remarkable was the experience of Ba-
rentz's Arctic expedition, almost three hundred years
ago. Dr. Dick alludes to it as follows : " The re
fractive power of the atmosphere has been found to
be much greater, in certain cases, than what has
now been stated. In the year 1595 [1596-97] a
company of Dutch sailors having been wrecked on
the shores of Novaia Zemlia, and having been obliged
to remain in that desolate region during a night of
more than three months [it was a little less than
three months], beheld the sun make his appearance
in the horizon about sixteen days before the time in
which he should have risen according to calculation,
and when his body was actually more than four de
grees below the horizon." The only explanation of
this astonishing phenomenon which the same writer
offers is found in this appended clause, — " which
circumstance has been attributed to the great refrac
tive power of the atmosphere in those intensely cold
regions." This is so unsatisfactory that not a few
prefer to believe, what seems entirely incredible,
namely, that Barentz and his men in the short space
of less than three months made a blunder of sixteen
days in their time record.
Professor Nordenskjold has recently referred to
the case as follows : " On the J^th November the
sun disappeared and was again visible on the 2431™;.
These dates have caused scientific men much per
plexity, because, in latitude 76° North, the upper
1 New Lands within the Arctic Circle. Lond. 1876 : vol. i., p. 237.
64 PARADISE FOUND.
edge of the sun ought to have ceased to be visible
when the sun's south declination in autumn became
greater than I30,1 and to have become visible again
when the declination again became less than that
figure ; that is to say, the sun ought to have been
seen for the last time at Barentz's Ice Haven on the
5S- October, and it ought to have appeared again
there on the ^ Feb. It has been supposed that the
deviation arose from a considerable error in count
ing the days, but this was unanimously denied by
the crew who wintered." 2 In a foot-note he gives
proofs which seem convincing that no such error
can have been committed.
But while these experiences of Barentz and the
Austrians point to a duration of darkness at the
Pole of less than sixty days out of the three hundred
and sixty-five, some apparently good authorities ex
tend the period to seventy-six or seventy-seven days.
Thus Captain Bedford Pirn, of the Royal Navy of
Great Britain, makes the following statement : " On
the 1 6th of March the sun rises, preceded by a long
dawn of forty-seven days, namely, from the 2Qth of
January, when the first glimmer of light appears.
On the 25th of September the sun sets, and after a
twilight of forty-eight days, namely, on the I3th of
November, darkness reigns supreme, so far as the
sun is concerned, for seventy-six days, followed by
one long period of light, the sun remaining above
the horizon one hundred and ninety-four days. The
year, therefore, is thus divided at the Pole: 194 days
sun ; 76 darkness ; 47 days dawn ; 48 twilight." J
1 On the assumption of a horizontal refraction of about 45'.
2 The Voyage of the Vega. London, 1882 : p. 192.
8 Pirn's Marine Pocket Case : quoted in Kinn's Harmony of th
Bible with Science. London, 1882 : 2d ed., p. 474.
TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY. 65
Even according to this account we should have at
the Pole only 76 days of darkness to 289 days of
light in the year. In other words, instead of being
in darkness little short of half of the time, as at the
equator, one would be in darkness but about one
fourth of the time. As far as light is concerned,
therefore, even on this calculation the polar region
is twice as favorable to life as any equatorial region
that can be named.
But whence this discrepancy among the astrono
mers ? Why should some of them make the polar
night sixteen days longer than others ?
The simple answer is that they proceed upon dif
ferent assumptions as to atmospheric refraction in
the region of the Pole. In our latitude twilight is
usually reckoned to begin when the centre of the
rising sun is yet 18° below the horizon. Starting
with this as the limit, and counting sunrise and sun
set to be the moments when the sun's upper limb is
on the horizon, we arrive at the division of the polar
year given by Captain Pirn. But astronomers say
that in England twilight has been observed when
the sun was 21° below the horizon. To be entirely
safe some have therefore taken 20° as the limit of
solar depression, and reckoning with this datum, in
stead of the 1 8° before mentioned, have found that
at the Pole the morning twilight would begin Jan
uary 2Oth, and the evening twilight would cease No
vember 2 1 st. This would make the period of dark
ness but 60 days, and the period of light 305. Thus
a difference of only two degrees in the assumed
limit of solar depression at the beginning and end
of the twilights makes the difference of sixteen days
in the supposed duration of darkness. " Which of
5
66 PARADISE FOUND.
the two calculations," writes an eminent American
mathematician, " is the more correct is known, I im
agine, by no one." l
To us in the present discussion the discrepancy is
of very little moment. It is only a question as to
whether at the Pole there is daylight three fourths
or five sixths of the year. Both suppositions may
be and probably are wrong. For if "in tropical
climates 16° or 17° is said to be a sufficient allow
ance for the extreme solar depression, while, on the
other hand, it is said in England to vary from 17° to
21°," it certainly looks as though in yet higher lati
tudes the light of the sun might be discernible when
its body is as much as 21° or 22° below the horizon;
and this would reduce the annual polar darkness to
less than fifty days. This supposition is rendered
the more probable by the fact that, while the ex
peditions already alluded to found much more of
daylight than their astronomical calculations had
led them to expect, we have no offsetting accounts
where the sun was awaited in vain. The final and
authoritative settlement of the question can be
reached only by actual observation. Among the
fascinating problems whose solution awaits the
progress of Arctic exploration, we must therefore
place the scientific determination of the unknown
duration of the polar day.
In view of the foregoing we are certainly safe in
conceiving of the polar night as lasting not over
four fortnights. During two of these, as Dick re
minds us, the moon would be walking in beauty
1 Professor J. M. Van Vleck, LL. D., of Wesleyan University, in
a letter to the author under date of October 11, 1883. Professor Van
Vleck was for many years a collaborates upon the American Epheme-
ris and Nautical Almanac. He is the authority for the next quoted
statement.
TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY. 6?
through the heavens, and exhibiting all her changing
phases of loveliness in unbroken successions. The
other two would be passed beneath the starry arch
of heaven, all of whose sparkling constellations
would be moving round and round the observer in
exactly horizontal orbits.
In such a perfect and regular stellar system kept
in view so long and so continuously, the irregular
movements of the "planets," or wandering stars,
could not possibly escape observation. All their cu
rious accelerations, retardations, conjunctions, decli
nations, would be perfectly marked and measured on
the revolving but changeless dial - plate of the re
moter sky. Dwelling in such a natural observatory,
any people would of necessity become astronomers.1
And how magnificent and orderly would the on
goings of the universe appear when viewed from
underneath a firmament whose centre of revolution
was fixed in the observer's zenith! After long
months of unbroken daylight; how would one's soul
yearn for a new vision of those stellar glories of the
night ! Nor would the moon and silent stars be the
only attractions of the brief period during which
the light of the sun was withdrawn. The mystic
play of the Northern Light would transform the
familiar daylight world into a veritable fairy-land.
1 Even an equatorial position would probably have been less favor
able. " The Peruvians had also their recurrent religious festivals ; . . .
but the geographic position of Peru, with Quito, its holy city, lying
immediately under the equator, greatly simplified the process by which
they regulated their religious festivals by the solstices and equinoxes ;
and the facilities which their equatorial position afforded for deter
mining the few indispensable periods in their calendar removed all
stimulus to fiirther progress" — Dr. Daniel Wilson on " Pre-Aryan
American Man," in Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society
•f Canada. Montreal, 1883 : vol. i., sect, ii., p. 60.
68 PARADISE FOUND.
In our latitude the Aurora Borealis is a compara
tively rare and tame phenomenon. In the highest
Arctic regions it almost nightly kindles its unearthly
glories.1 In itself it is lightning diluted and subli
mated to the point of harmlessness.2 Sometimes
these electric discharges not only fill the whole
heaven with palpitating draperies, but also tip the
hills with lambent flame, and cause the very soil on
which one stands to prickle with a kind of life.3
But after all the glories of the night begin the
greater glories of the polar day. Who with any
approach to adequacy has ever described a dawn ?
What poet has not attempted it, and what poet has
not failed ? But if it be impossible to picture one
1 A lately published report, speaking of the last winter at one of
these circumpolar stations of the far North, says : " Auroras have
been seen here during the winter almost every night, and during all
weathers. . . . The auroral forms or types which have appeared have
been those generally known, from the grand corona to the modest, pul
sating, little luminous cloud ; but as a characteristic feature attending
them all, I must mention the absence of stability in the types. Thus
only on a few occasions has there been an opportunity to watch the
stationary arc, but in general the aurorae have represented wafting
draperies and shining streamers with ever-changing position and in
tensity." — A. S. Steen, "The Norwegian Circumpolar Station," in
Nature, October n, 1883, p. 568.
2 " The electric discharges which take place in the polar regions
between the positive electricity of the atmosphere and the negative
electricity of the earth are the essential and unique cause of the for
mation of the polar light." — M. de la Rive in The Arctic Manual, p.
742.
3 "Mr. Lemstrom concluded that an electric discharge which could
only be seen by means of the spectroscope was taking place on the
surface of the ground all round him, and that from a distance it would
appear as a faint display of Aurora," — a display like " the phe
nomena of pale and flaming light which is sometimes seen on the top
of the Spitzbergen mountains." — The Arctic Manual, p. 739. Com
pare Elias Loomis, Aurora Borealis, Smithsonian Report, 1865. H.
Fritz, Das Polarlicht. Leipsic, 1881.
NIGHT SKIES OF EDEN.
An actual Aurora Borealis.
TESTIMONY OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY. 69
of our brief and evanescent day-dawns, who shall at
tempt a description of that surpassing spectacle in
which all the splendors and loveliness of sixty of our
dawns are combined in one. No words can ever por
tray it. No poet's imagination, even, has ever given
us such unearthly scenery.
First of all appears low in the horizon of the night-
sky a scarcely visible flush of light. At first it only
makes a few stars' light seem a trifle fainter, but
after a little it is seen to be increasing, and to be
moving laterally along the yet dark horizon. Twen
ty-four hours later it has made a complete circuit
around the observer, and is causing a larger number
of stars to pale. Soon the widening light glows with
the lustre of " Orient pearl." Onward it moves in
its stately rounds, until the pearly whiteness burns
into ruddy rose-light, fringed with purple and gold.
Day after day, as we measure days, this splendid
panorama circles on, and, according as atmospheric
conditions and clouds present more or less favorable
conditions of reflection, kindles and fades, kindles
and fades, — fades only to kindle next time yet more
brightly, as the still hidden sun comes nearer and
nearer his point of emergence. At length, when for
two long months such prophetic displays have been
filling the whole heavens with these increscent and
revolving splendors, the sun begins to emerge from
his long retirement, and to display himself once
more to human vision. After one or two circuits,
during which his dazzling upper limb grows to a, full-
orbed disk, he clears all hill-tops of the distant hori
zon, and for six full months circles around and
around the world's great axis in full view, suffering
no night to fall upon his favored home-land at the
7O PARADISE FOUND.
Pole. Even when at last he sinks again from view
he covers his retreat with a repetition of the deepen
ing and fading splendors which filled his long dawn
ing, as if in these pulses of more and more distant
light he were signaling back to the forsaken world
the promises and prophecies of an early return.
In these prosaic sentences we aim at no descrip
tion of the indescribable ; we only remind ourselves
of the bald facts and conditions which govern the
unpicturable transformations of each year-long polar
night and day.
Enough, however, has been said for our purpose.
Whoever seeks as a probable location for Paradise
the heavenliest spot on earth with respect to light
and darkness, and with respect to celestial scenery,
must be content to seek it at the Arctic Pole.
Here is the true City of the Sun. Here is the one
and only spot on earth respecting which it would
seem as if the Creator had said, as of His own heav
enly residence, "There shall be no night there."
CHAPTER III.
THE TESTIMONY OF PHYSIOGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY.
Die arctische Geologie birgt die Schliissel zu Losung vieler Rathsel. — PROFES
SOR HEER.
A n extensive continent occupied this portion of the globe when these strata "were
deposited. — BARON NORDENSKJOLD.
OUR hypothesis calls for an antediluvian conti
nent at the Arctic Pole. It is interesting to find
that a writer upon the Deluge writing more than
forty years ago advanced the same postulate.1 Is
the supposition that there existed such a continent
scientifically admissible ?
Until very recently too little was known of the
geology of the high latitudes to warrant or even to
occasion the discussion of such a question. Even
now, with all the contemporary interest in Arctic
exploration, it is difficult to find any author who has
distinctly propounded to himself and discussed the
question as to the geologic age of the Arctic Ocean.
It will not be strange, therefore, if we have here to
content ourselves with showing, first, that geologists
1 " On peut supposer, et je tacherai de developper cette idee plus
tard, qu'il a existe une periode geologique plus recoulee, . . . et qu'a
cette epoque 1'Europe, 1'Asie, et 1'Amerique septentrionale se joign-
aient au pole nord de maniere & former un continent d'une etendue
prodigeuse, se prolongueant vers le pole sud en trois presqu'iles, sa-
voir: 1'Amerique meridionale, 1'Afrique, et POceanie. C'est des
debris de cet ancien continent que des revolutions violentes ont forme
les terres actuelles." Frederik Klee, Le Deluge, French ed. Paris,
1847: p. 83. (Danish original, 1842.)
72 PARADISE FOUND.
and paleontologists do not think the present distri
bution of Arctic sea and land to be the primeval
one ; and secondly, that in their opinion, incidentally
expressed, a " continent " once existed within the
Arctic Circle of which at present only vestiges re
main.
We will begin with the distinguished Alfred Rus-
sel Wallace, who in speaking of the Miocene period
presents us with a very different Northern hemi
sphere from ours of to-day. For instance, in his
view Scandinavia was at that time a vast island. He
says : " The distribution of the Eocene and Miocene
formations shows that during a considerable portion
of the Tertiary period an inland sea, more or less oc
cupied by an archipelago of islands, extended across
Central Europe between the Baltic and the Black
and Caspian seas, and thence by narrower channels
southeastward to the valley of the Euphrates and
the Persian Gulf, thus opening a communication
between the North Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.
From the Caspian also a wide arm of the sea ex
tended, during some part of the Tertiary epoch,
northwards to the Arctic Ocean, and there is noth
ing to show that this sea may not have been in
existence during the whole Tertiary period. An
other channel probably existed over Egypt into the
eastern basin of the Mediterranean and the Black
Sea ; while it is probable that there was a communi
cation between the Baltic and the White Sea, leav
ing Scandinavia as an extensive island. Turning to
India, we find that an arm of the sea, of great width
and depth, extended from the Bay of Bengal to the
mouths of the Indus ; while the enormous depression
indicated by the presence of marine fossils of Eo-
TESTIMONY OF PHYSIOGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 73
cene age at a height of 16,500 feet in Western Tibet
renders it not improbable that a more direct chan
nel across Afghanistan may have opened a commu
nication between the West Asiatic and Polar seas." 1
Later, in the same book, Mr. Wallace incidentally
shows that the facts of Arctic paleontology call for
the supposition of a primitive Eocene continent in
the highest latitudes, — a continent which no longer
exists. His language is, " The rich and varied fauna
which inhabited Europe at the dawn of the Terti
ary period — as shown by the abundant remains of
mammalia wherever suitable deposits of Eocene age
have been discovered — proves that an extensive
Palearctic continent then existed." 2
Another most eminent authority in Arctic pale
ontology, the late Professor Heer, of Zurich, fully
fifteen years ago arrived at and published the con
clusion that the facts presented in the Arctic fossils
plainly point to the existence in Miocene time of a
no longer existing polar continent. Fuller reference
to his views will be made in our next chapter.3
On another and more lithological line of evidence
Baron Nordenskjold, the eminent Arctic explorer,
has arrived at the same conclusion. Speaking of
certain rock strata north of the 6gth degree of north
latitude, he says, " An extensive continent occupied
this portion of the globe when these strata were de
posited." 4 Elsewhere he speaks of this " ancient
polar continent " as something already accepted and
universally understood among scientific men. He
1 Island Life. London, 1880: pp. 184, 185.
2 Ibid., p. 362.
8 Professor Heer, deceased Sept. 27, 1883. On the preeminence
of his authority in this field, see Nature, Oct. 25, page 612.
* Expedition to Greenland. Arctic Manual, London, 1875: p. 423.
74 PARADISE FOUND.
also alludes to the conspiring evidences of its for
mer existence found in different departments of re-
search. " These basalt beds," he remarks, " prob
ably originated from a volcanic chain, active during
the Tertiary period, which perhaps limits the an
cient polar continent, in the same manner as is now
the case with the eastern coast of Asia and the
western of America ; this confirming the division of
land and water in the Tertiary period, which upon
totally different grounds has been supposed to have
existed." 1
Another authority in this field, writing of the
theory that continuous land once connected Europe
and North America at the North, remarks, " In
further support of this theory we have the fact that
no trace of sea deposit of Eocene age has ever been
found in the polar area, all the vestiges of strata
remaining showing that these latitudes were then
occupied by dry land." 2
Finally, as our assumption of the early existence
of a circumpolar Arctic continent is thus supported
by most competent geological authority, so is also
our hypothesis that its disappearance was due to
a submergence beneath the waters of the Arctic
Ocean. On this point what could be more explicit
and satisfactory than the following, from one of the
greatest of living geologists : " We know very well
that . . . within a comparatively recent geological
period ... a wide stretch of Arctic land, of which
Novaia Zemlia and Spitzbergen formed a part, has
been submerged." 3
1 Arctic Manual, p. 420.
2 J. Starkie Gardner in Nature, London, Dec. 12, 1878 : p. 127.
8 James Geikie, LL. D., F. R. S., Prehistoric Europe. A Geo
logical Sketch. London, 1881 : p. 41. Compare Louis Falies, £tudes
TESTIMONY OF PHYSIOGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 75
As to the natural conditions and forces which
may be conceived as having brought about this
continental catastrophe, geologists are not so well
agreed. The French savant, Alfonse-Joseph Adhe-
mar,1 has advanced a theory that this North-polar
deluge was only one of an alternating series, which
in age-long periods recur first at the North and
then at the South Pole. Flammarion, writing of it,
says : " This theory depends on the fact of the un
equal length of the seasons in the two hemispheres.
Our autumn and winter last 179 days. In the south
ern hemisphere they last 186 days. This seven
days, or 168 hours of difference, increase each year
the coldness of the pole. During 10,500 years the
ice accumulates at one pole and melts at the other,
thereby displacing the earth's centre of gravity.
Now a time will arrive when, after the maximum of
elevation of temperature on one side, a catastrophe
will happen which will bring back the centre of
gravity to the centre of the figure, and cause an im
mense deluge. The deluge of the North Pole was
4,200 years ago ; therefore the next will be 6,300
hence." 2
Another recent theory teaches that the poles are
periodically deluged, but simultaneously, not in al
ternation. The alternative movement is at the equa
tor. The crust of the earth at the equator is all the
time rising or sinking in a kind of aeonian rhythm.
historiques et philosophiques sur les Civilisations Europeenne, Romaine,
Greque, etc. Paris, 1874: vol. i., pp. 348-352.
1 In his Revolutions de la Mer. 2 ed, 1860.
2 Flammarion naturally adds, " It is very obvious to ask on this,
Why should there be a catastrophe, and why should not the centre of
gravity return gradually, as it was gradually displaced ? " Astronomi
cal Myths, p. 426. But a gradual displacement would produce a del
uge, only a gradual one.
76 PARADISE FOUND.
Whenever it sinks beyond the equilibrium figure,
due to its actual rate of rotation, lands emerge at the
poles ; whenever it rises beyond the equilibrium
figure, the polar lands sink and are submerged be
neath the waters of the ocean. Professor Alexander
Winchell thus expounds the view : " It has been
shown that one of the actions of tides upon a plan
etary body tends to diminish its rate of rotation.
Correspondingly, its equatorial protuberance will
tend to diminish. In the case of a planet still re
taining its liquid condition, the equatorial subsidence
will keep nearly even pace with the retardation.
To whatever extent viscosity exists, the subsidence
will follow the retardation. There will exist an ex
cess of protuberance beyond the equilibrium figure
due to the actual rotation, and this will act as an
additional retardative cause. In the case of an in-
crusted and somewhat rigid planet, the excess of
ellipticity would attain its greatest value. It would
continue to augment until the strain upon the mass
should become sufficient to lower the excessive pro
tuberance to the equilibrium figure. The recovery
of this figure might take place convulsively. The
equatorial regions would then subside, and the polar
would rise. In the case of an incrusted planet ex
tensively covered, like the earth, by a film of water,
retarded rotation would be attended by a prompt
subsidence of the equatorial waters and rise of the
polar waters to about twice the same extent. In
other words, the equatorial lands would emerge, and
the polar lands would become submerged. The
amount of emergence would diminish with increase
of distance from the equator, and the amount of
submergence would diminish with increase of dis-
TESTIMONY OF PHYSIOGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. JJ
tance from the pole. In about the latitude of 30°
the two tendencies would meet and neutralize each
other. Under these conditions, an incrusted and
ocean-covered planet, since it must be undergoing
a process of rotary retardation, must possess the
deepest oceans about the poles and the shallowest
about the equator. The first emergences of land,
accordingly, will take place within the equatorial
zone ; and the highest elevations and greatest land
areas will exist within that zone. The elevation of
equatorial land-masses would interpose new obstruc
tions to the equatorial ocean current. This would
divert it in new directions, and thus modify all cli
mates within reach of oceanic influences. Changes
of currents would necessitate the migration of ma
rine faunas, and changes of climate would modify
the faunas and floras of the land.
"But the protrusion of the equatorial land-mass
could not increase indefinitely. The same central
force which retains the ocean continually at the equi
librium figure strains the solid mass in the same di
rection. The strain must at length become greater
than the rigidity of the mass can withstand. The
equatorial land protuberance will subside toward
the level of the ocean. Some parts of the ocean's
bottom must correspondingly rise. Naturally, the
parts about the poles will rise most. Thus some
equatorial lands will become submerged, and some
northern and southern areas may become newly
emergent.
" But these vertical movements would not be ar
rested precisely at the point of recovery of the equi
librium figure. As suggested by Prof. J. E. Todd,
and less explicitly by Sir Wm. Thomson, the move-
?8 PARADISE FOUND.
ment would pass the equilibrium figure to an extent
proportional to the cumulation of strain. The equa
torial region would become too much depressed, and
the polar regions too much elevated. The effect of
this would be to accelerate the rotation sufficiently
to neutralize the ceaseless tidal retardation. The
day would be shortened. The ocean would rise still
higher along the shores of equatorial lands, and sub
side along the shores of polar lands.. An extension
of polar lands would immediately modify the cli
mates of the higher latitudes. They would become
subject to greater extremes. A considerable eleva
tion of polar lands would diminish the mean tem
perature, and the region of perpetual snow would be
enlarged. These effects would visit the northern
and southern hemispheres simultaneously.
" Such effects would follow from an excessive sub
sidence of equatorial lands. But the constant re-
tardative action of the tides would cause the equa
torial lands again to emerge, and protrude beyond
the limits of the equilibrium figure attained in a
later age. Thus the former condition would return,
and the former events would be repeated. In the
nature of force and matter these oscillations should
be repeated many times. Professor Todd suggests
that the present terrestrial age is one of equatorial
land subsidence and of high latitude emergence.
Immediately preceding the present, the Champlain
epoch was one of northern and probably of south
polar subsidence ; while further back, in the Glacial
epoch, we have evidence of northern, and perhaps
also south latitude elevation." l
1 World- Lif e ; or Comparative Geology. Chicago, 1883 : pp. 278-
280.
TESTIMONY OF PHYSIOGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 79
Leibnitz, Deluc, and others, have presented a still
different view of the etiology of all deluges, accord
ing to which they are the result of a steady shrink
age of the earth in consequence of its secular cool
ing. According to this theory, after once a solid
earth -crust had been formed, the cooling nucleus
within it withdrew the support on which the crust
had rested, in proportion as it shrank away from be
neath it, until, as often as the subterranean voids
thus created became too great for the strength of the
crust, this of necessity fell in with the force of in
computable tons, carrying the ruined surface to such
a depth as to cause it immediately ta be overflowed
and submerged by the adjacent water| of the ocean.
The geologic history of the earth is divided into
its strongly marked periods by these successive
" collapsions " of the rocky strata which constituted
the primitive crust. " Each succeeding cataclysm,"
says a recent advocate of the view, " considered as a
universal catastrophe, must leave the globe a wreck,
like the ruin of some immense cathedral whose dome
and arches have fallen in. Cornice and frieze, pillar
and entablature, broken and dislocated, lie at all an
gles of inclination and in the utmost confusion. So
it is with the ancient rocks and more modern strata.
Only to this mighty wreck have been added the out-
gushings of molten matter into fissures, creating
dikes, and the unsparing movements of oceans
sweeping loose materials and perishing forms of all
sorts from one place to another, partially covering
up and disguising the desolation."
Again, the same writer says : " The present sun
face of the earth is comparatively recent. The last
great cataclysm is, geologically speaking, not very
8O PARADISE FOUND.
ancient. Accumulating evidence compels us to be
lieve that one of those destructive events has oc
curred since the human race was created. The facts
I have presented plainly indicate that another is in
the course of preparation. Each of these vast peri
odical voids between the nucleus and the crust is
filled by collapsion of the surface. . . . Thus, if we
assume that the globe was one hundred or three
hundred miles greater in all its diameters when its
crust became hard and was bathed with the earliest
seas, and when marine plants and trilobites and mol-
lusca began to appear, the lithological characteris
tics of the paleozoic ages will be more acceptably
deciphered. So successively with the carboniferous
periods, whose vast areas have been folded up and
overflowed, and whose fields for reproduction have
been so numerous and extensive as to convince us
that Arctic America, during those remote ages, pre
sented tropical positions to the sun." 1
Although starting with no such purpose, the au
thor, in expounding this general Leibnitzian theory
of all deluges, incidentally explains the submersion
of the primeval Arctic continent. In accordance
with his theory, he asserts that " the diameter of the
earth at the poles must have been at some more an
cient epoch very much greater than now. It must
have been more than twenty-seven miles greater to
permit such equatorial or tropical exposures to the
1 C. F. Winslow, M. D., The Cooling Globe, or the Mechanics of
Geology. Boston, 1865 : pp. 50, 51. For the latest presentations and
criticisms of this general theory, see Winchell's World -Life, 1883,
pp. 302-308, and the literature there given. Among the older trea
tises constructed upon it, none is perhaps of so great interest to
the general reader as the work on The Deluge, by Fre'derik Klee
(Danish 1842, German 1843, French 1847).
TESTIMONY OF PHYSIOGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 8 1
sun as we know to be necessary for the production
of those vegetable forms which abound in the coal
measures of Arctic latitudes.1 If it was fifty or a
hundred miles greater during any portion of the
carboniferous age, it might have been two hundred
during the 'Taconic' period, and perhaps three hun
dred or more when the life-force began to fashion its
primordial and rudimentary organisms upon its wait
ing surface." He furthermore distinctly asserts that
Sir Isaac Newton's supposed demonstration that the
oblateness of the earth's figure is due to the centrif
ugal force generated by its rotation " is an error un
worthy of further consideration among geologists."
The true explanation, as he regards it, is stated as
follows : " The shorter axes of the globe — what at
present are our poles — are not the result of flatten
ing by rotation, but by a sudden falling in of sur
face."2
Here, of course, is just that down-sinking of wide
polar regions, in " comparatively recent " geologic
time, demanded by the facts of Arctic geology. It
must have been greater than any of those which
have occurred in other portions of the globe, for it
has permanently modified the originally and natu
rally spherical figure of the earth. The author is
" compelled to believe " that it, or one like it, " oc
curred since the human race was created." More
over, this belief is in no wise built upon the Biblical
record of the Deluge, for he speaks almost bitterly
of " the retarding influence of Jewish legends upon
the free expansion of the human intellect," and
1 Dr. Winslow seems here to forget that the primeval polar conti
nent was of necessity the sunniest of all lands.
2 Ibid., p. 49.
6
82 PARADISE FOUND.
makes Moses one of the two men whose " declara
tions and authority, more than the statements of all
others, have retarded the advancement of general
knowledge." Happily for Moses, the second in this
portentous duumvirate is no worse a man than Sir
Isaac Newton !
It is by no means necessary to commit ourselves
to any one of these theories of deluges, or to seek
still other explanations of the recognized subsidence
of the basin now occupied by the Arctic Ocean.
Enough for the present that upon the authority of
eminent physiographic geologists we have shown : —
1. That the present distribution of land and water
within the Arctic Circle is, geologically speaking, of
very recent origin.
2. That the paleozoic data of the highest explored
latitudes demand for their explanation the hypothe
sis of an extensive circumpolar continent in Mio
cene time.
3. That lithological authorities affirm that such a
continent existed.
4. That physical geography has reached the con
clusion that the known islands of the Arctic Ocean,
such as Novaia Zemlia and the Spitzbergen, are
simply mountain tops still remaining above the sur
face of the sea which has come in and covered up
the primeval continent to which they belonged.
5. And finally, that the problem of the process by
which this grand catastrophe was brought about is
now sporadically engaging the thoughts of terres
trial physicists and geologists.1
1 See the very interesting paper " On _Ice-Age Theories," in Trans
actions of the British Association, 1884, by K. Hill, M. A., F. G. S.
ATscTm the same volume W. F. Stanley's criticism of the theory of
Croll.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TESTIMONY OF PREHISTORIC CLIMATOLOGY.
Ver illud erat, ver magnus agebat Or bis. — VERGIL.
One of the most startling and important of the scientific discoveries of the last
twenty years has been that of the relics of a luxuriant Miocene flora in various
farts of the Arctic regions. It is a discovery which was totally unexpected, and
is even now considered by many men of science to be completely unintelligible, but
it is so thoroughly established, and it has such an important bearing on the subjects
•we are discussing in the present volume , that it is necessary to lay a tolerably com
plete outline of the facts before our readers. — A. R. WALLACE (1880).
THUS far, then, we have found theoretical geog-
ony demanding a location at the Pole for the first
country presenting conditions of Eden life ; we have
found the requisite astronomical conditions to give
it an abundance of light ; we have found the geolo
gists attesting the former existence of such a coun
try ; we must now interrogate Prehistoric Climatol
ogy, and ascertain whether this lost land ever enjoyed
a temperature which admits of the supposition that
here was the primitive abode of man. The answer
to our question comes, not from one, but from sev
eral sources.1
1 We have no use here for mere fancy sketches, like the following,
which appeared on the loth of May, 1884, in The Norwood Review
and Crystal Palace Reporter (Eng.), and which looks very much like
an unacknowledged loan from Captain Hall, of Arctic fame : " We
do not admit that there is ice up to the Pole. No one has been
nearer that point than 464 miles. Once inside the great ice-barrier,
a new world breaks upon the explorer ; a climate first mild like that
of England, and afterwards balmy as that of the Greek Isles, awaits
the hardy adventurer who first beholds those wonderful shores. Won
derful, indeed ; for he will be greeted by a branch of the human race
84 PARADISE FOUND.
First, geogony gives us an almost irresistible an
tecedent probability. For if the earth from its ear
liest consolidation has been steadily cooling, it is
hardly possible to conceive of a method by which
any region once too hot for human residence can
have become at length too cold except by passing
through all the intermediate stages of temperature,
some of which must have been precisely adapted to
human comfort.
Again, paleontological botany shows that in Eu
rope in Tertiary times this hypothetical cooling of
the earth was going on, and going on in the steady
and regular way postulated by theoretic geogony.1
But if a telluric process as essentially universal as
this was going on in Europe, there is no reason why
it should not have been going on in all countries,
whether to the north, or to the south, or to the east,
or to the west of Europe.
But we are not left to inferences of this sort. It
is now admitted by all scientific authorities that at
one time the regions within the Arctic Circle en
joyed a tropical or nearly tropical climate. Profes-
cut off from the rest of humanity by that change of climate which
came over Northern Europe about 2,000 years ago, but surrounded
by a profusion of life bewildering in the extreme."
Speculations or fancies of this sort have ever clustered about this
mysterious region of the Pole. As we shall hereafter see, they
abounded in remote antiquity. Even the singular fancy known to the
public as " Symmes' Hole " antedates Symmes, and may be found in
much more attractive form in Klopstock's Messiah. (K.'s Sammtliche
Werke. Leipsic, 1854: vol. i., pp. 24, 25.)
1 " L'etude des flores nous demontre que le climat de 1'Europe,
pendant les temps tertiaires, est toujours alle en se refroidissant (Tune
mantire continue et regulttre" — Le Prehistorique. Antiquite de
VHomme. Par Gabriel de Mortillet, Professeur d'anthropologie
prehistorique a l'£cole d'Anthropologie de Paris. Paris, 1883 : p.
TESTIMONY OF PREHISTORIC CLIMATOLOGY. 8$
sor Nicholson uses the following language : " In the
early Tertiary period the climate of the northern
hemisphere, as shown by the Eocene animals and
plants, was very much hotter than it is at present ;
partaking, indeed, of a sub-tropical character. In the
Middle Tertiary or Miocene period the temperature,
though not high, was still much warmer than that
now enjoyed by the northern hemisphere ; and we
know that the plants of the temperate regions at
that time flourished within the Arctic Circle." l
Mr. Grant Allen says, "One thing at least is
certain, that till a very recent period, geologically
speaking, our earth enjoyed a warm and genial cli
mate up to the actual poles themselves, and that
all its vegetation was everywhere evergreen, of
much the same type as that which now prevails in
the modern tropics." 2
Alluding to those distant ages, M. le Marquis de
Nadaillac remarks : " Under these conditions, life
spread freely even to the Pole." 3 Similar is the
language of Croll : " The Arctic regions, probably
up to the North Pole, were not only free from ice,
but were covered with a rich and luxuriant vegeta
tion." 4 Keerl holds that at the very Pole it was
then warmer than now at the equator.5 Professor
Oswald Heer's calculations would possibly modify
Keerl's estimate to a slight degree, but only enough
to make the circumpolar climate of that far-off age a
1 The Life- History of the Globe, p. 335.
2 Kncnvledge. London, Nov. 30, 1883 : p. 327.
3 Les Premiers Hommes et les Temps Prehistoriques. Paris, 1881 :
torn, ii., p. 391.
4 Climate and Time. Am. ed., 1875 : P- 7-
5 Die Schb'pfungsgeschichte und Lehre vom Paradies. Basel, 1861 :
Abth. I., p. 634.
86 PARADISE FOUND.
little more Edenic than is that of the hottest por
tions of our present earth.1
Sir Charles Lyell, who in the discussion of this
subject is characteristically cautious and "uniformi-
tarian," does not hesitate to say, " The result, then,
of our examination, in this and in the preceding
chapter, of the organic and inorganic evidence as to
the state of the climate of former geological periods
is in favor of the opinion that the heat was generally
in excess of what it now is. In the greater part of
the Miocene and preceding Eocene epochs the fauna
and flora of Central Europe were sub-tropical, and a
vegetation resembling that now seen in Northern
Europe extended into the Arctic regions as far as
they have yet been explored, and probably reached
the Pole itself. In the Mesozoic ages the predomi
nance of reptile life and the general character of the
fossil types of that great class of vertebrata indicate
a warm climate and an absence of frost between the
4Oth parallel of latitude and the Pole, a large ichthy
osaurus having been found in lat. 77° 16' N."2
Averaging the above views and estimates of sci
entific authorities, we have at the Pole, in the age of
the first appearance of the human race, a tempera
ture the most equable and delightful possible ; and
with this we may well be content.
1 Flora Fossilis Arctica. Zurich, 1868 : Bd. i., pp. 60-77. See also
Alfred Russel Wallace, Island Life. London, 1880 : ch. ix., pp. 163-
202. Well, therefore, sings a rollicking rhymster of the age, —
" When the sea rolled its fathomless billows
Across the broad plains of Nebraska ;
When around the North Pole grew bananas and willows,
And mastodons fought with the great armadillos
For the pine-apples grown in Alaska."
2 Principles of Geology, eleventh ed., vol. i., p. 231.
CHAPTER V.
THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL BOTANY.
S) von dort aus — d. h. aus diesem Bildungsherd fur die Pflanzen siid-
Ucker Breiten im hohen Nor den — hat eine strahlenfdrmige Verbreitung von
Typen stattgehabt. — PROFESSOR HEER.
It is now an established conclusion that the great aggressive faunas and floras
of the continents have originated in the North, some of them within the A relic
Circle. — PRINCIPAL DAWSON (1883).
ALL traditions of the primeval Paradise require us
to conceive of it as possessed of a tropical flora of
the most beautiful and luxuriant sort, — as adorned
with " every tree that is pleasant to the sight, or
good for food." Any theory, therefore, as to the site
of Eden must of necessity present a locality where
this condition could have been met. How is it with
the hypothesis now under consideration ?
To reply that a polar Eden is scientifically admis
sible in this respect would be to state but a small
part of the truth. So much might unhesitatingly be
affirmed in view of the facts presented in the last
chapter. Given in any country on the face of the
globe a long-continued tropical climate, and a tropi
cal vegetation may well be expected. Anything else
would be so abnormal as to require explanation.
But the study of Paleontological Botany has just
conducted to a new and entirely unanticipated re
sult. The best authorities in this science, both in
Europe and America, have lately reached the conclu
sion that all the floral types and forms revealed in the
88 PARADISE FOUND.
oldest fossils of the earth originated in the region of
the North Pole, and thence spread first over the north
ern and then over the southern hemisphere, proceeding
from North to South. This is a conception of the
origin and development of the vegetable world which
but a few years ago no scientific man had dreamed
of, and which, to many intelligent readers of these
pages, will be entirely new. Its profound interest,
as related to the present discussion, will at once be
seen.
Without attempting a chronological history of this
remarkable discovery, or in any wise assuming to as
sign to each pioneer student his share of the credit,
we may say that Professor Asa Gray, of America,
Professor Oswald Heer, of Switzerland, Sir Joseph
Hooker, of England, Otto Kuntze, of Germany, and
Count G. de Saporta, of France, have all been more
or less prominently associated with the establish
ment of the new doctrine. Sir Joseph Hooker's
studies of the floral types of Tasmania furnished
data, before lacking, for a general trans-latitudinal
survey of the whole field. He was struck by the fact
that in that far-off Southern world "the Scandinavian
type asserts his prerogative of ubiquity." Though
at that time he seems not to have divined its sig
nificance, he clearly saw the paleontological and
other vestiges of the great movement by which the
far North has slowly clothed the north-temperate,
the equatorial, and the southern regions with ver
dure. In one passage he describes the impression
made upon him by the facts in the following graphic
language : " When I take a comprehensive view of
the vegetation of the Old World, I am struck with
the appearance it presents of there having been a
TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL BOTANY. 89
continuous current of vegetation, if I may so fan
cifully express myself, from Scandinavia to Tasma
nia." J
Light on this problem of the far South was
soon to come from the far North. In 1868 Profes
sor Oswald Heer, of Zurich, published his truly
epoch-making work on the fossil flora of the Arctic
regions, in which he modestly yet with much con
fidence advanced the idea that the Bildungsherd, or
mother-region, of all the floral types of the more
southern latitudes was originally in " a great con
tinuous Miocene continent within the Arctic Cn%
cle," and that from this centre the southward spread
or dispersion of these types had been in a radial or
out-raying manner.2 His demonstration of the ex
istence in Miocene times of a warm climate and of
a rich tropical vegetation in the highest attainable
Arctic latitudes was complete and overwhelming.
Our latest geologists are still accustomed to speak
of his result as " one of the most remarkable geo
logical discoveries of modern times." 3 His theory
of a primeval circumpolar mother-region whence all
floral types proceeded is also at present so little
questioned that to-day among representative schol
ars in this field the absorbing and only question
seems to be, Who first proposed and to whom be
longs the chief honor of the verification of so broad
and beautiful a generalization ? 4
1 7^he Flora of Australia. London, 1859: p. 103. On the remark
able qualifications of Dr. Hooker to speak on this subject, see Sir
Charles Lyell, The Antiqtiity of Man, pp. 417, 418.
2 Flora Arctica Fossilis : Die fossile Flora der Polarldnder. Zurich,
1868 : I. Vorwort, pp. iii., iv., and elsewhere.
8 Archibald Geikie, LL. D., F. R. S., Textbook of Geology. Lon
don, 1882 : p. 868.
4 Some twenty-five years ago, in a paper on " The Botany of Japan "
90 PARADISE FOUND.
Here, then, is a new and wonderful light just
thrown upon the problem of the site of Eden. The
ology in some of its representatives had anticipated
the geologists in teaching that the earth's vestment
of vegetation originally proceeded from one primeval
centre, but it is the glory of paleontology to have
located that centre and to have given us an evidence
scientifically valid. Wherever man originated, the
biologist and botanist now know where was the cra
dle of some of the world's tenants. Whatever the
direction of the first human migrations, we are now
clear as to the direction of that " great invasion of
{Memoirs of the American Academy of Science, 1857, vol. vi., pp. 377-
458), Professor Asa Gray suggested the possibility of the common
origination in high northern latitudes of various related species now
widely separated in different portions of the north-temperate zone.
In 1872, four years after the publication of Heer's work, in treating
of " The Sequoia and its History," in an address (see Joiirnal of the
Am. Ass. for the Advancement of Science, 1872), he renewed in a
clearer and stronger manner his advocacy of the idea. In the same
year, and also in 1876, Count Saporta, with due acknowledgment of
the work of Professor Heer, gave currency to the theory in the scien
tific circles of France. Alluding to this, the Count has recently writ
ten, " Asa Gray was not the only botanist who had the idea of ex
plaining the presence of disjoined species and genera dispersed across
the boreal temperate zone and the two continents, by means of
emigrations from the pole as the mother-region whence these vege
table races had radiated in one or several directions. This had been
•parallelement conceived and developed in France upon the occasion
of the remarkable works of Professor O. Heer." Am. Journal of
Science, May, 1883, p. 394. The annotation appended to this by Pro
fessor Gray may be seen on the same page. For a German acknowl
edgment see Engler, Entwickelungsgeschichte der Pflanzenwelt, Th. i.,
S. 23 ; for an English, see Nature, London, 1881, p. 446 ; for an
American, J. W. Dawson, " The Genesis and Migration of Plants,"
in The Princeton Review, 1879, p. 277. But Dr. Dawson, referring to
Saporta's Ancienne Vegetation Polaire, Hooker's Presidential Address
of 1878, Thistleton Dyer's Lecture on Plant Distribution, and J.
Starkie Gardner's Letters in Nature, 1878, well remarks that "the
basis of most of these brochures is to be found in Heer's Flora Fos-
silis Arctica"
TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL BOTANY. 91
Arctic plants and animals which in the beginning
of Quaternary ages came southward into Europe." 1
But it may be that the testimony of Paleontologi-
cal Botany is not yet exhausted. What if it should
at length appear that along with the plants prehis
toric men — and civilized men at that — must have
descended from the mother-region of plants to the
place where history finds them ? Without any refer
ence to or apparent recognition of the great anthro
pological interest of such a question, at least one
botanist of Germany, reasoning from botanical facts
and postulates alone, has reached precisely this con
clusion.
This savant is Professor Otto Kuntze, who has
made special studies of the cultivated tropical plants.
What other botanists had found true of the wild
flora in continents separated by wide oceans he
finds true of domesticated plants. But the problem
of the spread of these plants from continent to con-
1 Geikie, Textbook of Geology, p. 874. Compare Wallace : " We
have now only to notice the singular want of reciprocity in the migra
tions of northern and southern types of vegetation. In return for the
vast number of European plants which have reached Australia, not
one single Australian plant has entered any part of the north temper
ate zone, and the same may be said of the typical southern vegeta
tion in general, whether developed in the Antarctic lands, New Zea
land, South America, or South Africa." Island-Life. London, 1880 :
p. 486. In like manner Sir Joseph Hooker affirms : " Geographically
speaking, there is no Antarctic flora except a few lichens and sea
weeds." Nature, 1881: p. 447. Possibly, however, the progress of
research may bring to light evidences of a second and less powerful
polar Bildiingsherd of primitive flora forms in the Antarctic region.
Some of the discoveries of F. P. Moreno look in that direction. See
" Patagonia, resto de un antiguo continente hoy sumerjido" Anales
de la societad cientifica Argentina. T. xiv., Entregua III., p. 97. Also,
"Lafaune eocene de la Patagonie australe et le grande continent an-
tarctique" Par M. E. L. Trouessart. Revue Scientifique, Paris, xxxii.,
pp. 588 ss. (Nov. 10. 1883). Also Samuel Haughton in last lecture
of Physical Geography. Dublin, 1880.
Q2 PARADISE FOUND.
tinent raises peculiar and most interesting questions.
Taking the banana-plantain, which was cultivated in
America before the arrival of Europeans in 1492,
Professor Kuntze asks, " In what way was this plant,
which cannot stand a voyage through the temperate
zone, carried to America ? " The difficulty is that
the banana is seedless, and can be propagated in a
new country only by carrying thither a living root
and planting it in a suitable soil. Its very seedless-
ness is evidence of the enormous length of time that
it has been cared for by man. As the Professor
says, "A cultivated plant which does not possess
seeds must have been under culture for a very long
period, — we have not in Europe a single exclusively
seedless, berry-bearing cultivated plant, — and hence
it is perhaps fair to infer that these plants were cul
tivated as early as the middle of the diluvial period."
But now as to its transportation from the Old World
to the New, or vice versa. " It must be remem
bered," he says, "that the plantain is a tree-like,
herbaceous plant, possessing no easily transportable
bulbs, like the potato or the dahlia, nor propagable
by cuttings, like the willow or the poplar. It has
only a perennial root, which, once planted, needs
hardly any care." After discussing the subject in
all aspects, he reaches the twofold conclusion, first,
that civilized man must have brought the roots of
the plant into any new regions into which it has
ever come ; and secondly, that its appearance in
America can only be accounted for on the supposi
tion that it was carried thither by way of the north-
polar countries at a time when a tropical climate
prevailed at the North Pole.1
1 Pflanzen als Beweis der Einwanderung der Amerikaner aus Asien
in praglazialer Zeit. Published in Ausland, 1878, pp. 197, 198.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL ZOOLOGY.
All the evidence at our command points to the Northern hemisphere as the
birth-place of the class, Mammalia^ and probably of all the orders. — ALFRED
RUSSEL WALLACE.
C'est a des emigrations venues, sinon du pole, du mains des contrees atte-
nantes au cercle polaire, qu'il faut attribuer la presence constat'ee dans les deux
mondes de beaucoup d'animaux propres a P hemisphere boreal. — COUNT SA-
PORTA.
BUT in settling the site of Eden the animal king
dom must also have a voice. According to the
Hebrew story, the representatives of this kingdom
were an earlier creation than Adam, and in Eden
was the world-fest of their christening. Evidently
the lost cradle of humanity must be fixed in time
posterior to the beginnings of animal life, and in
space so located that from that spot as a centre all
the multitudinous species, and genera, and orders,
and families of the whole animal creation might
have radiated forth to the various habitats in which
they are respectively found.
Now it is one of the striking facts connected with
Zoology that if we pass around the globe on any iso
thermal line, at the equator, or in any latitude
south of it, or in any latitude north of it, — until
we come to the confines of the Arctic zone, — we find,
as we pass from land to land, that the animals we
encounter are specifically unlike. Everywhere we
find, along with like climatic and telluric conditions,
different animals. The moment, however, we reach
94 PARADISE FOUND.
the Arctic zone, and there make the circuit of the
globe, we are everywhere surrounded by the same
species.
On the other hand, if we take great circles of the
earth's longitude, and pass from the Arctic region
down along the continental masses of the New
World to the South Pole, thence returning up a
meridian which crosses Africa and Europe, or Aus
tralia and Asia, we shall find in the descent abun
dant fossil evidence that we are moving forward on
the pathway along which the prehistoric migrations
of the animal world proceeded ; while on our return
on the other side of the planet we shall find that we
are no longer following in the track of ancient mi
grations, but are advancing counter to their obvious
movement. All this is as true of the flora of the
world as it is of the fauna. Hence the language of
the late Professor Orton : " Only around the shores
of the Arctic Sea are the same animals and plants
found through every meridian, and in passing
southward along the three principal lines of land
specific identities give way to mere identity of gen
era ; these are replaced by family resemblances, and
at last even the families become in a measure dis
tinct, not only on the great continents, but also on
the islands, till every little rock in the ocean has its
peculiar inhabitants." l
Another well-known naturalist says : " It should
also be observed that in the beginning of things the
continents were built up from North to South, — such
has been, at least, the history of the North and South
American and the Europeo-Asiatic and the African
continents ; and thus it would appear that north of
1 Comparative Zoology. New York, 1876 : p. 384.
TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL ZOOLOGY. 95
the equator, at least, animals slowly migrated south
ward, keeping pace as it were with the growth
and southward extension of the grand land-masses
which appeared above the sea in the Paleozoic ages.
Hence, scanty as is the Arctic and Temperate region
of the earth at the present time, in former ages
these regions were as prolific in life as the tropics
now are, the latter regions, now so vast, having
through all the Tertiary and Quaternary ages been
undisturbed by great geological revolutions, and
meanwhile been colonized by emigrants driven down
by the incoming cold of the glacial period."1
As long ago as 1876 Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace
wrote, " All the chief types of animal life appear
to have originated in the great north temperate or
northern continents, while the southern continents
have been more or less completely isolated during
long periods, both from the northern continent and
from each other."2 And again, speaking of mam
malia, he said, "All the evidence at our command
points to the Northern Hemisphere as the birth
place of the class, and probably of all the orders." 3
From all the facts but one conclusion is possible,
and that is that like as the Arctic Pole is the mother-
region of all plants, so it is the mother-region of all
animals, — the region where, in the beginning, God
created every beast of the earth after his kind, and
1 A. S. Packard, Zoology. New York, 2d ed., 1880 : p. 665. — In his
Elements of Geology, New York, 1877, p. 159, Le Conte gives a graph
ical representation of the polocentric zones of the earth's flora and
fauna (Fig. 131), which ought to have suggested the true genetic con
nection of the whole.
2 The Geographical Distribution of Animals. New York ed., vol. i.f
P- 173-
8 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 544.
96 PARADISE FOUND.
cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth
on the earth after his kind. And this is the con
clusion now being reached and announced by all
comparative zoologists who busy themselves with
the problem of the origin and prehistoric distribu
tion of the animal world. But to believe that Pro
fessor Heer's " Miocene Arctic Continent " was the
cradle of all floral types and the cradle of all faunal
forms, and yet deny that it was also the cradle of
the human race, is what few philosophical minds are
likely long to do.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TESTIMONY OF PALEONTOLOGICAL ANTHROPOL
OGY AND ETHNOLOGY.
Quittons done pour un instant les jar dins d'Armide, et, nouveaux Argonautes^
parcourons les r'egions hyperborees ; cherchons-y, arm'es de patience et surtout de
scepticism, Vorigine de la plupart des nations et des langues tnodernes, celle meme
des habitans de VAttique, et des autres peuples de la Grece, objets de noire savante
idolatrie. — CHARLES POUGENS (A. D. 1799).
Telle est la theorie qui s^accord le mieux a-vec la ntarche pr'esumle des races
humaines. — COUNT SAPORTA (A. D. 1883).
MAN is the one traveler who has certainly been in
the cradle of the human race. He has come from
the land we are seeking. Could we but follow back
the trail of his journeyings it would assuredly take
us to the garden of pleasantness from which we are
exiled. Unfortunately the traveler has lost whole
volumes of his itinerary, and what remains is in
many of its passages not easy of decipherment.
What says anthropologic and ethnic Paleontology
— or what some French writers are beginning to
call Paleoethnique Science — respecting the hypoth
esis of a Polar Eden ?
At the time when the present writer began his
university lectures on this subject the teachings of
professed anthropologists were in the chaotic and
contradictory condition indicated in Part First. One
of the strongest proofs he could then find that a
new light was about to dawn on this field was in
the there cited work of Quatrefages, entitled "The
7
98 PARADISE FOUND.
Human Species." l Accordingly, in discussing the
probable verdict of this science upon the admissi-
bility of the new theory of human distribution, the
lecturer presented the following paragraph, and
there rested the case : —
" Anthropology as represented by Quatrefages
seems to be actually feeling its way to the same hy
pothesis. This writer first argues that in the pres
ent state of knowledge we should be led to place the
cradle of the race in the great region ' bounded on
the south and southwest by the Himalayas, on the
west by the Bolor mountains, on the northwest by
the Ala-Tau, on the north by the Altai range and
its offshoots, and on the east by the Kingkhan, on
the south and southeast by the Felina and Kwen-lun.'
Later on, however, he says that paleontological stud
ies have very recently led to results which are ' ca
pable of modifying these primary conclusions.' And
after briefly stating these results, he starts the ques
tion whether or no the first centre of human appear
ance may not have been ' considerably to the north
of the region' just mentioned, even ' in polar Asia!
Without deciding, he adds, ' Perhaps prehistoric
archeology or paleontology will some day confirm or
confute this conjecture.' "
The cautious anticipation here expressed was
quickly fulfilled. At the concluding lecture of the
same first course it was possible to present the fol
lowing as the ripe conclusion of a fellow country
man of Quatrefages, one of the foremost savants of
1 New York edition, pp. 175, 177, 178. See M. Zaborowski's sup
port of Quatrefages' conjecture in the Revue Scientifigue, Paris, 1883,
p. 496.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. 99
Europe, Count Saporta : l " We are inclined to re
move to the circumpolar regions of the North the
probable cradle of primitive humanity. From there
only could it have radiated as from a centre to
spread into the several continents at once, and to
give rise to successive emigrations toward the South.
This theory best agrees ivith the presumed march of
the human races." 2
1 The following note appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser of
May 25, 1883: —
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE.
A few years ago, about the time of the appearance of the first edi
tion of Dr. WincheU's Preadamites, in a letter addressed to its
learned author, I expressed my belief that the Garden of Eden, the
first abode of man, was to be sought in a now submerged country, sit
uate at the North Pole. More than a year ago, in a printed essay
on Ancient Cosmology, I made the statement that " all ethnic tra
ditions point us thither for the cradle of the race." Early last Jan
uary I began a course of lectures in the post-graduate department
of the university, setting forth my view and the astonishing mass of
cosmological, historic, mythologic, paleontologic, paleoethnic, and
other evidences which conspire to its support. Last Monday after
noon, about twenty minutes before I was to give the concluding lecture
of the course, I opened the fresh-cut leaves of the Revtte des Deux
Mondes, the number for the first of this month. In it my eye quickly fell
upon Un Essai de Synthese Paleoethnique, in which M. le Marquis G.
de Saporta sums up and sets forth the latest results of paleontological
research, so far as they bear upon ethnology. Judge of my gratifica
tion to find some twenty pages devoted to the question of the cradle
of the human race in the light of the latest science, and to read as the
conclusion of this learned savant that this cradle must have been
" within the Arctic Circle."
As Count Saporta has lately shown a little anxiety that American
scholarship should not receive too exclusive credit for first proposing
a closely related doctrine which he holds in common with our Pro
fessor Gray, and with Switzerland's Professor Heer (see American
Journal of Science, May, 1883, p. 396, footnote), he will doubtless
pardon the public statement of this, tome, most interesting coinci
dence. WILLIAM F. WARREN.
Boston, May 24, 1883.
2 See APPENDIX, Sect. II. : " How the Earth was Peopled."
IOO PARADISE FOUND.
In the foregoing we have more than a demonstra
tion of the bare admissibility of our hypothesis. We
have in it the latest word of anthropological science
respecting the birth-place of the human race. To
make it a complete confirmation of our theory, so
far as this field of knowledge is concerned, but one
thing is lacking, and that is a clearer recognition of
the great natural revolution or catastrophe which
destroyed man's primitive home and occasioned the
world-wide post-diluvian dispersion. This lack, how-
ever, is abundantly supplied by the foremost Ger
man ethnographers, and even by such as represent
the most radical Darwinian views. Thus Professor
Friedrich M tiller, of Vienna, and Dr. Moritz Wagner,
both of whom place the probable cradle of the race
in some high latitude in Europe or Asia, lay the ut
most stress upon the mighty climatic revolution
which came in with the glacial age, ascribing to it
the most stupendous and transforming influences
that have ever affected mankind.1 In our view the
deterioration of natural environment reduced the
1 " Es muss dort, wo der Mensch aus dem Zustand, den er mit den
Thieren gemeinsam hat, sich entwickelte, ein gewaltiger Wechsel der
Naturkrafte und seiner Umgebung stattgefunden haben. Nichts ist
natiirlicher als an die Eiszeit des Endes der Pleiocanen und der Di-
luvial-Periode, welche durch eine Reihe schlagender geologischer
Thatsachen fur das nordliche Europa, Asien und America bestatigt
wird, zu denken. Damals, wo das Paradies des in der Befriedigung
leiblicher Bediirfnisse einzig und allein dahinlebenden, unschuldigen,
Gutes und Boses noch nicht unterscheidenden- Menschen mit eisiger
Hand zertrlimmert wurde, damals fing der Mensch den eigentlichen
Kampf urns Dasein an, und stieg durch Anspannung aller seiner
Krafte zum Herrn der Natur empor." As the tree no more bore
fruit the " climber " was forced to " become a runner ; " this differen
tiated the foot from the hand, modified the leg, and in time changed
the pithecoid ancestors of humanity into men. Friedrich Miiller,
Allgemeine Ethnographic. Wien, 1873 : P- 3^-
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. IOI
vigor and longevity of the race ; in theirs it changed
one of the tribes of the animal world into men !
Which of these views is the more rational may safely
be left to the reader's judgment. Few will be dis
posed to accept the doctrine that man is simply a
judiciously-iced pithecoid.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCLUSION OF PART THIRD.
We must now be prepared to admit that God can plant an Eden even in Spitz-
bergen ; that the present state of the -world is by no means the best possible in re
lation to climate and vegetation ; that there have been and might be again condi
tions -which could convert the ice-clad Arctic regions into blooming Paradises. —
PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON.
WE are at the end of the first series of tests, and
with what results ?
1. Scientific Cosmology, searching for the place
where the physical conditions of Eden-life first ap
peared on our globe, is brought to the very spot
where we have located the cradle of our race.
2. Contrary to all ordinary impressions, we have
found this same spot the most favored on the globe,
not only as respects the glories of night, but also in
respect to prevalence of daylight.
3. In its geology we have found scientific evidence
of the vast cataclysm which destroyed the antedilu
vian world and permanently transferred to lower
latitudes the habitat of humanity.
4. We have found scientifically accepted evidence
that at the time of the advent of man the climate
at the Arctic Pole was all that the most poetic leg
ends of Eden could demand.
5. From Paleontological Botany we have learned
that this locality was the cradle of the floral life-
forms of the whole known earth.
6. By Paleontological Zoology we have been as-
CONCLUSION OF PART THIRD. 103
sured that here too originated, and from this centre
eradiated, the fauna of the prehistoric world.
7. And lastly, we have found the latest ethnog
raphers and anthropologists slowly but surely grav
itating toward the same Arctic Eden as the only
centre from which the migrations of the human race
can be intelligibly interpreted.
We asked of these sciences simply, " Is our hy
pothesis admissible ? " Their answer is more than an
affirmative ; it is an unanticipated and pronounced
confirmation.
Some months after the foregoing chapters had
been written and delivered in lectures before classes
of students in the University, a very interesting re
inforcement of the views therein advanced appeared
in a little work by Mr. G. Hilton Scribner, of New
York, entitled ''Where did Life Begin ? " l As Mr.
Scribner was conducted to a belief in the north polar
origin of all races of living creatures by considera
tions quite independent of those mythological and
historical ones which first led the present writer to
the same opinion, the reader of these pages will find
in the following extracts a special incentive to pro
cure and read the entire treatise from which they
are taken. That two minds starting with such en
tirely different data should have reached so nearly
simultaneously one and the same conclusion touch
ing so difficult and many-sided a problem is surely
not without significance.
1 Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. I2mo, pp.64.
Ex-Chancellor Winchell (anonymously) reviews the work with much
respect in Science, March 7, 1884, p. 292. For courteous permission
to quote from the treatise without restriction I publicly return the
author my thanks.
PARADISE FOUND.
Our first extract is from pp. 21-23, where the fol
lowing summary of previous reasonings and conclu
sions is given : " We may therefore safely conclude,
if the code of natural laws has been uniformly in
force, —
« First, — That life commenced on those parts of
the earth which were first prepared to maintain it ;
at any rate, that it never could have commenced
elsewhere.
" Second, — As the whole earth was at one time
too hot to maintain life, so those parts were prob
ably first prepared to maintain it which cooled first.
"Third, — That those parts which received the
least heat from the sun, and which radiated heat
most rapidly into space, in proportion to mass, and
had the thinnest mass to cool, cooled first.
" Fourth, — That those parts of the earth's sur
face, and those only, answering to these conditions
are the Arctic and Antarctic zones.
" Fifth, — That as these zones were at one time
too hot, and certain parts thereof are now too cold,
for such life as inhabits the warmer parts of the
earth, these now colder parts, in passing from the
extreme of heat to the extreme of cold, must have
passed slowly through temperatures exactly suited
to all plants and all animals in severalty which now
live or ever lived on the earth.
" Sixth, — If the concurrent conditions which
have usually followed lowering temperature followed
the climatic changes in this case, life did commence
on the earth within one or both of certain zones sur
rounding the poles, and sufficiently removed there
from to receive the least amount of sunlight neces
sary for vegetal and animal life.
CONCLUSION OF PART THIRD. 105
" It seems almost superfluous to say that those
parts of the earth which first became cool enough
to maintain life had a climate warmer at that time
than that which we now call torrid. It was for an
epoch, and probably a very long one, as hot as it
could be and maintain life.
" It is also quite obvious, in the light of the fore
going considerations, that as the temperate zones
have always received more heat from the sun, and
have had more mass per square foot to cool, in pro
portion to radiating surface, than the polar zones,
so, on the other hand, they have always received
less heat from the sun and have had less mass to
cool, in proportion to radiating surface, than the
torrid zone ; and so when the arctic zones cooled
from a tropical to what we now call a temperate cli
mate, the temperate zones had cooled down to that
temperature which we now call a torrid climate,
while the equatorial belt was still too hot for any
form of life. Thus the lowering of temperature,
climatic change, and that life which made its advent
in these zones surrounding the poles have crept
thence slowly along, pari passu, from these polar
regions to the equator."
Farther on (pp. 26, 27) he claims that the progres
sive cooling of the region at the Pole is all-sufficient,
as a natural cause, to account for that dispersion of
life, vegetable and animal, which proceeded from the
Arctic centre southward : " As might be readily sup
posed, these Arctic regions which first became cool
enough to maintain life would from the same causes
be the first to become too cold for the same pur
pose. And this cold would occur first as a temper
ate climate near and around the pole ; at any rate,
106 PARADISE FOUND.
in the centre of a zone just sufficiently removed
from the pole to combine the influence of the sun
with its own cooling temperature, so as to become
the first fit habitation of life.
" This central cold creating a temperate climate
would thus have become the first and all-sufficient
cause of a dispersion and distribution of both the
tropical plants and animals over another zone next
south, next further removed from the pole, and next
sufficiently cool to maintain such life. Moreover,
this cooler climate occurring in the centre would
have driven out and dispersed such life equally, in
all possible directions. So, if the first habitable zone
included the northernmost land of all the great con
tinents which converge around the North Pole, this
dispersion from an increasing cold to the north of
each of them would have sent southward plants and
animals from a common origin and ancestry, to peo
ple and to plant all the continents of the earth, with
the possible exception of Australia, whose flora and
fauna are certainly anomalous and possibly indige
nous."
In section fourth (pp. 28-34) the author briefly
touches upon some of the surface features of the
globe peculiarly favorable to the southward migra
tion of plants and animals : " Let us now see how
admirably the earth is adapted, by its surface forma
tion and topography, for a southern migration from
a zone surrounding the North Pole. In the first
place, nearly the whole of the earth's surface (and
all the northern hemisphere) is corrugated north and
south with alternate continents and deep sea chan
nels almost from pole to pole. Both the eastern and
western continents extend with unbroken land con-
CONCLUSION OF PART THIRD.
nections from the Arctic zone through the northern
temperate, the torrid, and through the southern
temperate, almost to the Antarctic zone. Between
these great continents lie the deep oceans, whose
channels run north and south through as many de
grees of latitude. The great air and ocean currents
run north or south ; all the mountain ranges of the
western continent and many of the eastern conti
nents run mainly north and south. Nearly all the
great rivers of the northern hemisphere run north
or south. To a southern migration — in other
words, a migration from the Arctic region toward
the equator — these peculiarities of topography, these
great corrugations and mountain ranges, these chan
nels and currents, are roads and vehicles, guides and
helps ; while to an east and west migration the same
features are not only obstacles and hindrances, but
in the main barriers insuperable.
" The impassability of mountain ranges for most
plants is shown by the fact that strongly marked
varieties in great numbers and many distinct spe
cies occur upon the eastern slopes of the Rocky
Mountains, the Sierra Nevadas, the Alleghanies, and
even lower ranges, which are not found at all upon
their western sides, and vice versa. Such a condi
tion of things, incompatible as it is with an eastern
and western migration, is quite consistent, however,
with a north and south movement. For all the cli
matic conditions, especially that of rainfall, are so
different on the opposite sides of all long mountain
ranges that the same variety, split and separated by
the northern extremities of these ranges, would, in
moving southward along their eastern and western
sides, and encountering such diverse conditions,
108 PARADISE FOUND.
have become in the course of time, under the laws
of adaptation, distinct varieties, and probably differ
ent species.
" It may be well now to examine some of the
conditions assisting this movement. Hot air being
lighter than cold, the heated air of the northern
equatorial belt has always risen and passed mainly
toward the North Pole in an upper current, while the
cooler and heavier currents from the north have
swept southward, hugging the surface of the conti
nents, laded with pollen, minute germs and spores,
and all the winged seeds of plants, bending grass
and shrubs and trees constantly to the southward,
and so, by small yearly increments, moving the whole
vegetal kingdom through valleys and along the sides
of mountain ranges, down the great continents, al
ways moving with, and never across, these great sur
face corrugations. It is unnecessary to add that all
insects and herbivorous animals would follow the
plants, or that the birds and carnivorous animals
would follow the herbivorous animals and the in
sects. So, too, the currents of the ocean have been
established in obedience to similar laws : as hot
water is lighter than cold, great surface currents
have been formed in both the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans, flowing from the equator to the Arctic re
gions ; while the cooler and heavier currents from
the Arctic have swept the floor of both oceans from
shore to shore to the southward, carrying all kinds
of marine life from the pole toward the equator with
them.
" It may be well in this connection to allude to an
other fact seriously affecting the bottom currents
from the pole toward the equator of both air and
CONCLUSION OF PART THIRD. 109
ocean. By reason of the revolution of the earth
upon its axis, a given point upon its surface 1,000
miles south of the North Pole moves to the eastward
at the rate of about 260 miles an hour, while another
point in the same meridian at the equator would be
moving to the eastward a little more than 1,000
miles an hour ; so every cubic yard of air and water
which starts in a bottom current from the polar re
gions for the equator must, before reaching the
equator, acquire an eastward motion of about 750
miles an hour. The tendency, therefore, of all bot
tom currents of air and ocean moving to the south
is to press to the westward every obstacle met with
in its course, and the result, both as to the currents
and all movable things they come in contact with,
would be to give them a southwestern course and
movement.
" Now it is a strange coincidence, if nothing more,
that the eastern coasts of all the continents have a
southwestern trend, are full of bays, inlets, and shoal
water, as though the floor of the ocean was being
constantly swept up against them ; while the west
ern coasts are more abrupt, straight, and touch
deeper water, as though the sweepings from the land
were being constantly rolled into the sea along their
entire lines.
" Notwithstanding all these indications of a
southern or southwestern movement, ever since the
migration of plants and animals first attracted at
tention, students of natural science, careful and con
scientious observers, able and discriminating inves
tigators, have, almost with one accord, been looking
east and west across these great north and south
corrugations and natural barriers for the paths of
HO PARADISE FOUND.
their journeyings ; searching along every parallel of
latitude, across lofty mountain ranges, broad con
tinents, deep and wide oceans, and ocean currents,
to and fro ; and if perchance they looked north or
south it was only in search of some ferry or ford
south of the ice-fields by which to pass the flora and
fauna from one continent to another, and thus ac
count for what is very evident, namely, that many
widely distributed species and varieties have come
from the same locality and had a common ancestry
and origin. Is it not evident that the very plants
and animals (in a tribal sense) whose migrations
they have been engaged in unraveling were as
much older than ice and snow on the earth as it
would require in time to lower the average temper
ature over a vast area from a tropical to a frigid cli
mate ? "
The portion of the little treatise least satisfactory,
even to its author, is the part which relates to man
(pp. 52-54). By making the human race the de
scendants (or, as on Darwinist principles we ought
rather to say, the ascendants) of one or more pairs
of lower animals, and assuming that our animal an
cestry had already been driven from the polar region
before they were blessed with this unanticipated
progeny, the author suggests a possible manner in
which " the absence on the earth of our immediate
predecessor," the missing link, might be accounted
for. He says, " If it is true that, in common with
many existing plants and animals, the ancestry of
man — some animal with a thumb, and so having
the possibility of all things — shared this northern
home, this common and immensely remote origin,
earlier by long epochs than the glacial period, it
CONCLUSION OF PART THIRD. Ill
would afford a possible ground for the claim of the
unity of the origin of man, and also a reason for the
absence on earth of his immediate predecessor. His
arboreal progenitor in the pioneer ranks of this
great southern movement, ages before the Quater
nary (during all of which period man has probably
inhabited the earth), was possibly driven naked by
the ever-following, merciless cold, thus keeping him
within the southward-moving tropical climate, down
the eastern and western continents alike, until it and
he, arriving in the lapse of ages at the equatorial
belt, and being always at the head and still rising in
the scale of being by this movement, discipline, and
process, became sufficiently advanced by slow de
grees to build fires, clothe himself, make imple
ments, and, possibly, domesticate animals, — at least
the first and most useful to primitive man, the dog,
— and so prepared for conflict and for all climates,
turned backward to the verge of everlasting ice,
subduing, slaying, and exterminating, first his own
ancestry, his nearest but now weak rival, which by
lingering behind and struggling for life in a climate
of increasing cold, would have become extremely de
generated and so easily disposed of, if not actually
exterminated by the climate itself ; thus leaving as
the nearest in resemblance to man, and yet the re
motest in actual relationship both to him and to his
ancestry, the later tribes of anthropoid apes since
developed, nearer to the equator, from the next
lower animals which accompanied him in his south
ward march."
In this speculation, it will be observed, the place
of the origin of the human race is entirely indeter
minate. When its far-off arboreal ancestor left the
112 PARADISE FOUND.
Pole his only prophetic endowment was "a thumb."
But possessing this, he " had the possibility of all
things." In his successors, ages afterward, the real
transition from the plane of animal to that of human
life seems to be represented as having taken place
"at the equatorial belt." Unfortunately, however,
for the theory, the claim of the new men to the
virtue and name of humanity was now poorer than
before the change, for their first act was to turn
fiercely upon those who brought them into being,
" subduing, slaying, and exterminating their own an
cestry " in a frenzy worse than brutal. The shock
to the feelings of the near but younger relatives of
the massacred victims — the mild-mannered apes —
must have been violent in the extreme. In fact,
among all the tens of thousands of their descendants
not one, from that day to this, has ever been seen to
smile.
But in justice to our author it should be stated
that he attaches little, if any, weight to this Darwin-
istic episode. He frankly says, " This last proposi
tion, however, is but a vague and very deductive
supposition, for which nothing is claimed beyond a
possibility or bare probability." It is possible that
he is only slyly indulging in a bit of quiet pleasantry
at the expense of the new-school anthropogonists.
Whether so or not, he hastens without further words
to return from it to the impregnable positions of his
main argument, and to reinforce them by a fresh
study of the power and function of heat in the cos
mic unfoldment and distribution of life.
The next two divisions of the present work will
show us that the birth-memories of mankind con
duct us, not to "the equatorial belt," but to the
CONCLUSION OF PART THIRD. 113
polar world, and that in Mr. Scribner's answer to
the question, " Where did Life begin ? " human as
well as floral and faunal life should be included.
After examining these fresh lines of evidence it is
believed that the reader will find more impressive
than ever the words with which our author con
cludes his charming tractate : —
" Thus the Arctic zone, which was earliest in cool
ing down to the first and highest heat degree in the
great life-gamut, was also first to become fertile, first
to bear life, and first to send forth her progeny over
the earth. So, too, in obedience to the universal
order of things, she was first to reach maturity, first
to pass all the subdivisions of life-bearing climate
and finally the lowest heat degree in the great life-
range, and so the first to reach sterility, old age, de
generation, and death. And now, cold and lifeless,
wrapped in her snowy winding sheet, the once fair
mother of us all rests in the frozen embrace of an
ice-bound and everlasting sepulchre."
PART FOURTH.
THE HYPOTHESIS CONFIRMED BY ETHNIC
TRADITION.
CHAP.
I. ANCIENT COSMOLOGY AND MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY.
II. THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN JAPANESE THOUGHT.
III. IN CHINESE THOUGHT.
IV. IN EAST ARYAN OR HINDU THOUGHT.
V. IN IRANIAN OR OLD PERSIAN THOUGHT.
VI. IN AKKADIAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN THOUGHT.
VII. IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN THOUGHT.
VIII. IN ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT.
All these things happened in the North ; and afterward, when men were created,
they were created in the North ; but as the people multiplied they moved toward
the South, the Earth growing larger also, and extending itself in the same direction,
— H. H. BANCROFT, Native Races, vol. iii., p. 162.
II y a done beaucoup d'apparence que les peuples du Nord, en descendant vers le
Midi, y portent les emblems relatifs au physique de leur climat ; et ces emblems sont
devenus des fables, puis des personnages, puis des Dieux, dans des imaginations
vives et pretes a tout animer, comme celles des Orientaux. — JEAN SYLVAIN BAILLY.
CHAPTER I.
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY AND MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY.
Not enough credit has been given to the ancient astronomers. For instance,
there is no time within the scope of history when it was not known that the earth
is a sphere, and that the direction DOWN at different points is toward the same
point at the earth's centre. Current teaching in the text-books as to the knowl
edge of astronomy by the ancients is at fault.1 — SIMON NEWCOMB, LL. D.
Hie -vertex nobis semper sublimis, at ilium
Sub pedibus Styx atra videt manesque profundi.
VERGIL.
BACK of every mythological account of Paradise
lies some conception of the world at large, and es
pecially of the world of men. Rightly to understand
and interpret the myths, we must first understand
the world-conception to which they were adjusted.
Unfortunately, the cosmology of the ancients has
been totally misconceived by modern scholars. All
our maps of " The World according to Homer " rep
resent the earth as flat, and as surrounded by a level,
flowing ocean stream. "There can be no doubt,"
says Bunbury, " that Homer, in common with all his
successors down to the time of Hecataeus, believed
the earth to be a plane of circular form." 2 As to
the sky, we are generally taught that the early
Greeks believed it to be a solid metallic vault.3 Pro-
1 Lowell Lecture. Boston Daily Advertiser, Nov. 29, 1881.
2 E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks
and Romans, London, 1879: vol. i., p. 79. Professor Bunbury was
a leading contributor to Smith's Dictionary of Ancient Greek and Ro
man Geography. Compare Friedreich, Die Realien in der Ilias und
Odysee. 1856, § 19. Buchholz, Die Homerische Realien. Leipsic,
1871 : Bd. i., 48.
1 See Voss, Ukert, Bunbury, Buchholz, and the others.
Il8 PARADISE FOUND.
fessor F. A. Paley aids the imagination of his
readers as follows : " We might familiarly illustrate
the Hesiodic notion of the flat circular earth and the
convex overarching sky by a circular plate with a
hemispherical dish-cover of metal placed over it and
concealing it. Above the cover (which is supposed
to rotate on an axis, -n-oXos) live the gods. Round
the inner concavity is the path of the sun, giving
light to the earth below." l
That all writers upon Greek mythology, including
even the latest,2 should proceed upon the same as
sumptions as the professed Homeric interpreters
and geographers building upon their foundations is
only natural. And that the current conceptions of
the cosmology of the ancient Greeks should pro
foundly affect current interpretations of the cosmo-
logical and geographical data of other ancient peo
ples is also precisely what the history and inner
relationships of modern archaeological studies would
lead one to expect. It is not surprising, therefore,
that the earth of the Ancient Hebrews, Egyptians,
Indo-Aryans, and other ancient peoples has been
assumed to correspond to the supposed flat earth of
the Greeks.3
1 The Epics of Hesiod, with an English Commentary. London,
1861 : p. 172.
2 See, for example, Sir George W. Cox : An Introduction to the
Science of Comparative Mythology and Folk-Lore. London and New
York, 1881 : p. 244. Decharme, Mythologie de la Grece Antique.
Paris, 1879: p. n.
8 It is true that Heinrich Zimmer remarks, " Die Anschauung die
sich bei Griechen und Nordgermanen findet, dass die Erde eine
Scheibe sei, um die sich das Meer schlingt, begegnet in den vedischen
Samhita nirgends." Altindisches Leben. Berlin, 1879: p. 359. But
even he does not advance from this negative assertion to an exposition
of the true Vedic cosmology. Compare M. Fontane : " Leur cosmog-
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY. 1 19
A protracted study of the subject has convinced
the present writer that this modern assumption, as
to the form of the Homeric earth is entirely base
less and misleading. He has, furthermore, satisfied
himself that the Egyptians, Akkadians, Assyrians,
Babylonians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Greeks, Irani
ans, Indo-Aryans, Chinese, Japanese, — in fine, all
the most ancient historic peoples, — possessed in
their earliest traceable periods a cosmology essen
tially identical, and one of a far more advanced type
than has been attributed to them. The purpose of
this chapter is to set forth and illustrate this oldest
known conception of the universe and of its parts.
In ancient thought, the grand divisions of the
world are four, to wit : the abode of the gods, the
abode of living men, the abode of the dead, and,
finally, the abode of demons. To locate these in
right mutual relations, one must begin by represent
ing to himself the earth as a sphere or spheroid,
and as situated within, and concentric with, the
starry sphere, each having its axis perpendicular, and
its north pole at the top. The pole-star is thus in the
true zenith, and the heavenly heights centring about
it are the abode of the supreme god or gods. Ac
cording to the same conception, the upper or north
ern hemisphere of the earth is the proper home of
living men ; the under or southern hemisphere of
the earth, the abode of disembodied spirits and rulers
of the dead ; and, finally, the undermost region of
all, that centring around the southern pole of the
raphie est embryonaire. La terre est pour 1'Arya ronde et plate
comme un disque. Le firmament vedique, concave, vien se souder a
la terre, circulairement, a Phorizon." Inde Vedique, Paris, 1881 : p. 94.
With this agrees Bergaine, La Religion Vedique. Paris, 1878 : p. I.
I2O PARADISE FOUND.
heavens, the lowest hell.1 The two hemispheres of
the earth were furthermore conceived of as separated
from each other by an equatorial ocean or oceanic
current.
To illustrate this conception of the world, let the
two circles of the diagram which constitutes the
frontispiece of this work represent respectively the
earth-sphere and the outermost of the revolving
starry spheres. A is the north pole of the heavens,
so placed as to be in the zenith. B is the south pole
of the heavens in the nadir. The line A B is the
axis of the apparent revolution of the starry heavens
in a perpendicular position. C is the north pole of
the earth ; D its south pole ; the line C D the axis
of the earth in perpendicular position, and coinci
dent with the corresponding portion of the axis of
the starry heavens. The space I I I I is the abode
of the supreme god or gods ; 2, Europe ; 3, Asia ; 4,
Libya, or the known portion of Africa ; 5 5 5, the
ocean, or " ocean stream ; " 666, the abode of dis
embodied spirits and rulers of the dead ; 7/77,
the lowest hell.2
1 It is worthy of notice that the sight of portions of the south-
polar heavens, especially the starless region known as " the black Coal
Sack," is to this day capable of suggesting the associations of the
bottomless pit. Thus in a recent traveler's letter of the ordinary kind
we read, " Every clear evening we could see the Magellan Clouds,
soft and fleece-like, floating airily among the far-off constellations.
These mysterious bodies look like star-spray, or borrowed bits of the
Milky Way. Then, too, our eyes would seek out, as by some strange
fascination, those still more mysterious ' chambers of the South,' the
black Coal Sack, with its retreating depths of darkness, wherein no
star shines. These irregular spaces, emptinesses, as it were, in the
heavens, impress one with a sense of something uncanny, as though
these were, indeed, the ' blackness of darkness forever? " — The Sunday
School Times. Philadelphia, 1883: p. 581.
2 The reception accorded to the foregoing " True Key " is illus
trated in the APPENDIX, Sect. III.
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY. 121
Now, to make this key a graphic illustration of
Homeric cosmology, it is only necessary to write in
place of i I i i " LOFTY OLYMPOS ; " in place of
555, " THE OCEAN STREAM;" in place of 666,
" HOUSE OF AIDES " (Hades) ; and in place of 7 7 7 7,
" GLOOMY TARTAROS." Imagine, then, the light as
falling from the upper heavens, — the lower terres
trial hemisphere, therefore, as forever in the shade ;
imagine the Tartarean abyss as filled with Stygian
gloom and blackness, — fit dungeon-house for de
throned gods and powers of evil ; imagine the " men-
illuminating" sun, the "well-tressed" moon, the
"splendid" stars, silently wheeling round the central
upright axis of the lighted hemispheres, — and sud
denly the confusions and supposed contradictions of
classic cosmology disappear. We are in the very
world in which immortal Homer lived and sang.1 It
is no longer an obscure crag in Thessaly, from which
heaven-shaking Zeus proposes to suspend the whole
earth and ocean. The eye measures for itself the
nine days' fall of Hesiod's brazen anvil from heaven
to earth, from earth to Tartarus. The Hyperboreans
are now a possibility. Now a descmsus ad inferos
can be made by voyagers in the black ship. Un
numbered commentators upon Homer have pro
fessed their despair of ever being able to harmonize
the passages in which Hades is represented as " be
yond the ocean " with those in which it is repre
sented as "subterranean." Conceive of man's dwell
ing-place, of Hades, and the ocean, as in this key,
and the notable difficulty instantaneously vanishes.
Interpreters of the Odyssey have found it impos*
sible to understand how the westward and north-
1 See cut in APPENDIX, Sect. VI. : " Homer's Abode of the Dead."
122 PARADISE FOUND.
ward sailing voyager could suddenly be found in
waters and amid islands unequivocally associated
with the East. The present key explains it per
fectly, showing what no one seems heretofore to
have suspected, that the voyage of Odysseus is a
poetical account of an imaginary circumnavigation
of the mythical earth in the upper or northern hemi
sphere, inc 'hiding a trip to the southern or under hemi
sphere and a visit to the o/x,<£aAo? OaXda-a-rj^ or North
Pole.
In this cosmological conception the upright axis
of the world is often poetically conceived of as a
majestic pillar, supporting the heavens and furnish
ing the pivot on which they revolve. Euripides 1 and
Aristotle2 unmistakably identify the Pillar of Atlas
with this world-axis. How interesting a feature this
pillar became in ancient mythologies will be seen
below in chapter third of this part, in chapter sec
ond of part six, and elsewhere in this volume.
Again, according to this view the highest part of
the earth, its true summit, would of course be at the
North Pole. And since the whole of the upper or
northern hemisphere would in this case be con
ceived of as rising on all sides from the equatorial
ocean toward that summit, nothing would be more
natural than to view the entire upper half of the earth
as itself a vast mountain, the mother and support of
all lesser mountains.3 Moreover, as the abode of the
supreme God or gods was thought to be directly
over this summit of the earth, it would be extremely
easy for the imagination to carry the summit of so
1 Peirithous, 597, 3-5, ed. Nauck.
2 De Anim. Motione, c. 3.
8 See Bundahish) chaps, viii., xii., etc.
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY.
12$
stupendous a mountain into and far above the clouds,
and even to extend it to such a height that the gods
of heaven might be conceived of as having their
abode upon its top. This is precisely what came to
pass, and hence in the cosmology of the ancient Egyp
tians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians,
Indians, Chinese, and others we find, under various
names, but always easily recognizable, this Weltberg,
or " Mountain of the World," situated at the North
Pole of the earth, supporting or otherwise connect
ing with the city of the
gods, and serving as the axis
around which sun, moon,
and stars revolve. Often
we also find evidence that
the under hemisphere was
in like manner conceived of
as an inverted mountain,
antipodal to the mountain
of the gods, and connecting
at its apex with the abode
of demons.1 The adjoin
ing figure may illustrate this
conception of the earth,
the upper protuberance be
ing the " Mount of the Gods," the lower the in
verted "Mount of Demons."
A clear view of the first of these remarkable
1 " Dans les conceptions de la cosmogonie mythique des Indians on
oppose au Sou-Merou ' le bon Merou,' du Nord, tin Kou-Merou mau-
vais et funeste, qui y fait exactement pendant et en est 1'antithese. De
meme les Chaldeens opposaient a la divine et bienheureuse montagne
de 1'Orient accadien 'garsag-babbarra = assyrien sad fit samsi, une
montagne funeste et tenebreuse . . . accadien, ''garsag-gigga = assy
rien sad erib samsi, situee dans les parties basses de la terre." — Le«
normant, Origines de I'llisfoire, torn. ii. I, p. 134.
124 PARADISE FOUND.
World-Mountains is so essential to any right under
standing of mythical geography and of the mythical
terrestrial Paradise that a more extended examina
tion of the subject seems a necessity.
Beginning with the Egyptians we may note this
remarkable fact ; that notwithstanding his sharing
the common and mistaken modern assumption that
the Egyptians conceived of the earth as flat, Brugsch,
confessedly the foremost authority in ancient Egyp
tian geography, places the highest and most sacred
part of the Egyptians' earth at the North, making
the land there to rise until in actual contact with
heaven. He also places at the farthest southern
extremity of the earth another lofty mountain, Ap-
en-to or Tap-en-to, literally "the horn of the world."1
Now, while several professed Egyptologists have re
cently come to the conviction that the earth of the
Egyptians was a sphere, no one has brought out the
fact that these two heights are two antipodal polar
projections of the spherical earth, the upper or celes
tial one being the mount of the gods, and the lower
or infernal one the mount of demons. Of the for
mer the following passage in the " Book of Hades "
may naturally be understood to speak : —
" Draw me [the nocturnal sun], infernal ones ! . . .
"Retreat towards the eastern heavens, toward the
dwellings which support Sar, that mysterious moun
tain that spreads light among the gods [or, that I
may spread light among the gods ?], who receive me
when I go forth from amongst you, from the re
treat." 2
1 Geographische Inschriften altagyptischer Denkmdler. Leipsic,
1858 : vol. ii., p. 37.
2 Records of the Past, vol. x., p. 103. I understand this to refer to
the (northward and southward) annual, and not to the diurnal, move
ment of the sun.
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY. 125
To the inverted infernal mountain seem to apply
the expressions in chapter one hundred and fifty of
the " Book of the Dead : " —
" Oh, the very tall Hill in Hades ! The heaven
rests upon it. There is a snake or dragon upon it :
Sati is his name," etc.1
In another chapter of the same book a place is
spoken of as " the inverted precinct," which place is
Hades.2 Moreover, the translator of another text,
called the "Book of Hades," describes a "pendant
mountain " as a curious feature in the vignette illus
trations of the original. This can hardly be any
thing other than Ap-en-to, the inverted mountain of
Hades.3
1 The mention of the starry serpent or dragon completes the paral
lelism between the North Polar and South Polar mountains. " Mr.
Procter has remarked that when the North Pole Star was Alpha
Draconis, the Southern was most probably the star Eta Hydri, and
certain to have been in the constellation Hydra. . . . The encircling
Serpent, the symbol of eternal going round, was figured at both Poles,
the two centres of the total starry revolution." Massey, The Natural
Genesis, vol. i., p. 345. In our discussion of the Pillar of Atlas we
have spoken of the identity of Draco with the dragon which assisted
the nymphs in watching the golden apples in the North Polar Gar
dens of the Hesperides. See Depuis, Origines des Constellations, p. 147.
The same parallelism is alluded to in the following : "The hypoceph-
alus in question is divided into four compartments, two of which
are opposed to the two others as if to indicate the two celestial hemi
spheres ; the upper one above the terrestrial world and the lower one
below it." Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, March 4,
1884. London, 1884 : p. 126. See also Revue Archeologique. Paris,
1862 : vi., p. 129.
2 Bunsen, Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. v., p. 208.
3 Records of the Past, vol. x., p. 88. Two years after the above
was written I met with the following : " The god advancing in a re
versed position " (in a certain New Zealand legend) "is the sun in the
Underworld. The image exactly accords with an Egyptian scene of
the sun passing through Hades, where we see the twelve gods of the
earth, or the lower domain of night, marching towards a mountain
126 PARADISE FOUND.
The Akkadians, who antedated even the most an
cient empires of the Tigro-Euphrates valley, had in
like manner a " Mountain of the World," which was
unlike all other mountains in that it was a support
on which the heavens rested and around which they
revolved. It was called Kharsak Kurra. It was so
rich with gold and silver and precious stones as to
be dazzling to the sight. An ancient Akkadian
hymn respecting it uses this language : —
" O mighty mountain of Bel, Im-Kharsak, whose
head rivals heaven, whose root is in the holy deep !
" Among the mountains like a strong wild bull it
lieth down.
" Its horn like the brilliance of the sun is bright.
" Like the star of heaven it is filled with sheen." 1
In another hymn, apparently of great antiquity, we
find the goddess Istar addressed as " Queen of this
Mountain of the World," which is further located
and identified by its connection with "the axis of
heaven," and with "the four rivers" of the Akkadian
Paradise.2
turned upside down, and two typical personages are also turned upside
down. This is an illustration of the passage of the sun through the
Underworld. The reversed on the same monument are the dead.
Thus the Osirified deceased, who has attained the second life, in the
Ritual says exultingly, ' / do not walk upon my head? The dead, as
the Akhu, are the spirits, and the Atua [of the New Zealand legend]
is a spirit who comes walking upside down." Massey, The Natural
Genesis. London, 1883 : vol. i., p. 529. (The italics are Massey's.) The
passage is the more remarkable from the fact that Massey elsewhere
states that the earth " was considered flat by the first myth-makers,"
who in his scheme appear to have been the Egyptians. Ibid., vol. i.,
p. 465.
1 Records of the Past. London, vol. xi., pp. 131, 132. Lenormant,
Chaldcean Magic, p. 168. Lenormant's latest revised translation may
be seen in Les Origines de FHistoire, torn. ii. i, pp. 127, 128.
2 George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 392, 393. Mr. G. Mas-
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY. I2/
Lenormant places this mountain in the North (but
sometimes incorrectly in the East or Northeast), and
makes it the "lieu de r assembled des dieux /" but
when he locates the corresponding antipodal moun
tain of Hades in the West, instead of in the South,
he seems to have gone entirely beyond the evidence.
At least, Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch affirms that in the
cuneiform literature thus far known he has discov
ered no trace of such a location.1 But on this ques
tion of the site of these mountains more will be said
in chapter sixth of the present division.
The Assyrians and Babylonians inherited the
Akkadian conception. One of the titles of the su
preme divinity of the Assyrians related to the sa
cred mount. An invocation to him opens thus :
" Assur, the mighty god, who dwells in the temple
of Kharsak Kurra." 2 An Assyrian hymn speaks
of the
" feasts of the silver mountain,
The heavenly courts," —
and the translator makes the expression refer to
this "Assyrian Olympos." 3 Sayce finds in the fol
lowing a plain reference to the same : —
" I am lord of the steep mountains, which tremble
whilst their summits reach to the firmament.
sey remarks, " In an Akkadian hymn to Ishtar, the goddess is ad
dressed as the ' Queen of the Mountain of the World ' and ' Queen
of the land of the four rivers of Erech ; ' that is, as the goddess of the
mythical Mount of the Pole and the four rivers of the four quarters,
which arose in Paradise. The Mountain of the World was the
Mount of the North." The Natural Genesis, vol. ii., p. 21.
1 Wo lag das Paradies ? Leipsic, 1881 : p. 1 2 1.
2 Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. London : vol. i., pp.
44, 45. Translated by Mr. Sayce in Records of the Past, vol. xi.,
P- 5-
3 Records of the Past, vol. iii., p. 133.
128 PARADISE FOUND.
11 The mountain of alabaster, lapis, and onyx, in
my hand I possess it." l
How current the idea must have been among the
Babylonians is shown by the rhetorical use made of
it by the prophet Isaiah. Rebuking the arrogance
of the king of Babylon and pre-announcing to him
his doom, the prophet beholds his fall as already ac-
complished, and in a passage of wonderful pictorial
power and beauty exclaims, " How art thou fallen
from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning ! howv
art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken
the nations ! For thou hast said in thine heart, I
will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne
above the stars of God : I will sit also upon the
mount of the congregation in the sides of the North
(or more correctly in the uttermost parts of the
North, in the extreme northern regions), I will as
cend above the heights of the clouds ; I will be like
(or equal to) the Most High. Yet thou shalt be
brought down to Sheol, to the sides (or regions) of
the pit."2
Since the publication of Gesenius's commentary
on this passage and his excursus upon the " Gotter-
berg im Norden " appended to it, no question has re
mained in the minds of scholars as to the character
of the Har Moedy the " mount of the congregation,"
in the far-off North.
Among the Chinese we find a similar celestial
mount, the mythical Kwen-lun. It is often called
simply " The Pearl Mountain." On its top is Para
dise, with a living fountain from which flow in oppo
site directions the four great rivers of the world.3
1 Records of the Past, vol. iii., p. 126. 2 Isaiah xiv. 12-15.
8 Stollberg, Memoires concernant les Chinois, t. i., p. IOI, cited in
Keerl, Lehre vom Paradies. Basle, 1861 : p. 796.
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY.
Around it revolve the visible heavens ; and the stars
nearest to it, that is nearest to the Pole, are sup
posed to be the abodes of the inferior gods and
genii. To this day, the Tauists speak of the first
person of their trinity as residing in " the metropo
lis of Pearl Mountain," and in addressing him turn
their faces to the northern sky.1
A striking parallel to the Egyptian and Akkadian
idea of two opposed polar mountains, an arctic and
an antarctic, — the one celestial and the other infer
nal, — is found among the ancient inhabitants of
India. The celestial mountain they called Su-Meru,
the infernal one Ku-Meru.2 In the Hindu Puranas
the size and splendors of the former are presented
in the wildest exaggerations of Oriental fancy. Its
height, according to some accounts, is not less than
eight hundred and forty thousand miles, its diameter
at the summit three hundred and twenty thousand.
Four enormous buttress mountains, situated at mu
tually opposite points of the horizon, surround it.
One account makes the eastern side of Meru of the
color of the ruby, its southern that of the lotus, its
western that of gold, its northern that of coral. On
its summit is the vast city of Brahma, fourteen thou
sand leagues in extent.3 Around it, in the cardinal
1 Joseph Edkins, Religion in China. 2d ed., 1878 : p. 151. The
Ainos of Japan, although declared to be " ausserordentlich arm an
Sagen," have nevertheless their corresponding mythical Gold-moun
tain, Kogane-yama. Dr. B. Scheube, Die Ainos. Yokohama, 1882 :
p. 24.
2 " Meru, in Sanskrit, signifies an axis or pivot." Wilford in Asi
atic Researches. London, 1808: vol. viii., p. 285. The prefix " Su "
signifies " beautiful."
3 In Brugsch's Astronomische Inschriften, p. 177, we read, "Es gab
ein himmliches Ami or On, Heliopolis, dessen b'stliche Lichtseite und
westliche Lichtseite ofters erwahnt werden." Was this perhaps the
I3O PARADISE FOUND.
points and the intermediate quarters, are situated the
magnificent cities of Indra and the other regents of
the spheres. The city of Brahma in the centre of
the eight is surrounded by a moat of sweet flowing
celestial waters, a kind of river of the water of life
(Ganga), which after encircling the city divides into
four mighty rivers flowing towards four opposite
points of the horizon, and descending into the equa
torial ocean which engirdles the earth.1
Sometimes Mount Meru is represented as planted
so firmly and deeply in the globe that the antarctic
or infernal mountain is only a projection of its lower
end. Thus the Surya Siddhanta says : " A collec
tion of manifold jewels, a mountain of gold, is Meru,
passing through the middle of the earth-globe (b/m-
gola\ and protruding on either side. At its upper
end are stationed along with Indra the gods and
the Great Sages (maharishis) ; at its lower end, in
like manner, the demons have their abode, — each
[class] the enemy of the other. Surrounding it on
every side is fixed, next, this great ocean, like a
girdle about the earth, separating the two hemi
spheres of the gods and of the demons."
Conceiving of Meru in this way, as a kind of core
extending through the earth and projecting at each
pole, one can easily understand the following pas
sage, in which two pole-stars are spoken of instead
of one : " In both \i. e., the two opposite] directions
from Meru are two pole-stars fixed in the midst of
the sky." As these mark the two opposite poles of
Vorbild and Egyptian counterpart of the city of Brahma, the city of
Sakra, and all the other Asiatic Gotterstddte in the celestial pole ?
It would be very interesting to know.
1 See APPENDIX, Sect. IV. : " The Earth of the Hindus."
ANCIENT COSMOLOGY. 131
the heavens, it is correctly added that "to those
who are situated in places of no latitude [i. e., on
the equator] both these pole-stars have their place
in the horizon." Farther on in the same treatise
the common designation used for the northern hem
isphere is the hemisphere of the gods, and for the
southern the hemisphere of the asuras, or demons.1
A picture of " the Earth of the Hindus," showing
the exact position of Meru and its buttress-mounts,
will be given below in chapter fourth of the present
Part (p. 152).
That the cosmology of ancient India should have
been retained and propagated in its main features
by all the followers of Buddha was only natural.
Accordingly, in their teachings our earth, and every
other, has its Sumeru, around which everything cen
tres.2 Its top, according to the Nyayanousara Shas-
ter, is four-square, and on it are situated the three
and thirty (Trayastrinshas) heavens. Each face of
the summit measures 80,000 yojanas. Each of the
four corners of the mountain-top has a peak seven
hundred yojanas high. These, of course, are simply
the four buttress -mountains of the v Hindu Meru
lifted to the summit and made the culminating
1 Chapter xii., sections 45-74. On the origin and age of this trea
tise see the notes of the translator, Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, in the
Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. vi. New Haven,
1860 : pp. 140-480.
2 Its name, in Japanese, is written Sxi-meru ; in Chinese, Si-mi-
liu, or Siu-mi ; in Tibetan, Rirap, or Ri-rap-hlumpo ; in Mongolian
(Kalmuck), Summer Sola, or Sjumer Sula ; in Burmese, Miem-mo.
C. F. Koeppen, Die Religion des Buddhas. Berlin, 1857 : vol. i., p.
232. See, also, A. Bastian, Die Volker des ostlichen Asiens, Bd. iii.,
8- 352, 353 5 vi., 567, 568> 578, 580, 587, 589, 590. Spence Hardy,
Manual of Buddhism, pp. 1-35. The same, Legends of the Buddhists.
London, 1866 : pp. xxix., 42, 81, 101, 176, etc.
132 PARADISE FOUND.
peaks. They are ornamented, we are told, with the
seven precious substances, — gold, silver, lapis-lazuli,
crystal, cornelian, coral, and ruby. One of the cities
on the summit is called Sudarsana, or Belle-vue. It
is 10,000 yojanas in circuit. The stoned gates are
\\ yojanas high, and there are 1,000 of these gates,
fully adorned. Each gate has 500 blue-clad celestial
guards, fully armed. In its centre is a kind of inner
city called the Golden City of King Sakra, whose
pavilion is 1,000 yojanas in circuit, and its floor is of
pure gold, inlaid with every kind of gem. This royal
residence has 500 gates, and on each of the four
sides are 100 towers, within each of which there are
1,700 chambers, each of which chambers has within
it seven Devis, and each Devi is attended by seven
handmaidens. All these Devis are consorts of Ktng
Sakra, with whom he has intercourse in different
forms and personations, according to his pleasure.
The length and breadth of the thirty-three heav
ens is 60,000 yojanas. They are surrounded by a
sevenfold city wall, a sevenfold ornamental railing, a
sevenfold row of tinkling curtains, and beyond these
a sevenfold row of Talas-trees. All these encircle
one another, and are of every color of the rainbow,
intermingled and composed of every precious sub
stance. Within, every sort of enjoyment and every
enchanting pleasure is provided for the occupants.
Outside this wonderful city of the gods, there is
on each of its four sides a park of ravishing beauty.
In each park there is a sacred tower erected over
personal relics of Buddha. Each park has also a
magic lake, filled with water possessing eight pecu
liar excellences. Thus beauties are heaped upon
beauties, splendors upon splendors, marvels upon
MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY. 133
marvels, until in sheer despair the wearied and ex
hausted imagination abandons all further effort at
definite mental representation.1
It is worthy of note that, while most scholars have
supposed the Sumeru of Buddhism to be simply a
development of the Indian idea, Mr. Beal, a high
authority, has, in one of his latest publications,
claimed for it an independent and coordinate, if not
primitive, character.2 Other peculiarities in Buddhist
cosmography, especially the detachment of Uttara-
kuru and of Jambu-dvvipa from Mount Meru, — in
both of which particulars the Buddhist cosmos dif
fers from the Puranic, — lend some apparent confir
mation to this claim.
In ancient Iranian thought this same celestial
mountain presents itself to the student. Its name
is Hara-berezaiti, the mythical Albordj,3 — " the seat
of the genii : around it revolve sun, moon, and stars ;
over it leads the path of the blessed to heaven." 4
1 See Beal, Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, pp. 75-81. Comp. Beal,
Lechtres on Buddhist Literature in China, pp. 146-159.
2 " I cannot doubt that the Buddhist myth about Sume or Sumeru is
distinct from the later Brahmanical account of it, and allied with the
universal belief in and adoration of the highest." — Buddhist Litera
ture in China. London, 1882 : p. xv.
3 " Das erste Vorkommen des Namens im Zend ist im Gebet an
Mithra (invoco, celebro supremum umbilicum aquarum, nach Duper-
rons Uebersetzung) welches E. Burnouf wortgetreuer iibersetzt : ' Ich
preise den hohen gottlichen Berggipfel, die Quelle der Wasser, und
das Wasser des Ormuzd,' wo die Bezeichnung eine ganz allgemeine
ist. Vom Adjectiv berezat, d. i. ' erhaben ' in der Parsen Uebersetz
ung, stammt erst der ' Bordj? d. i. der Erhabene. Als Berg aus
dem die Wasser hervortreten, wird er im Zend * Nafedro ' (Nabhi im
Sanskrit.) d. i. ' der Nabel ' genannt, als Erhohung welche Wasser
giebt ; und als Berg der das befruchtende Princip enthalt zum Genius
der Frauen erhoben." — Ritter, Erdkunde, viii. 47.
* Spiegel, Erdnische Alterthumskunde. Leipsic, 1871 : Ed. i ., S.
463. The Venid&d. Fargard xxi., et passim. See references in Index
134 PARADISE FOUND.
The following description of it in one of the invo
cations of Rashnu in the Rashn Yasht forcibly re
minds one of the Odyssean description of the heav
enly Olympos : " Whether thou, O holy Rashnu, art
on the Hara-berezaiti, the bright mountain around
which the many stars revolve, where come neither
night nor darkness, no cold wind and no hot wind,
no deathful sickness, no uncleanness made by the
Daevas, and the clouds cannot reach up to the Ha-
raiti Bareza ; we invoke, we bless Rashnu." l
The following description is from Lenormant :
" Like the Meru of the Indians, Hara-berezaiti is the
Pole, the centre of the world, the fixed point around
which the sun and the planets perform their revolu
tions. Analogously to the Ganga of the Brahmans,
it possesses the celestial fountain Ardvi-Sura, the
mother of all terrestrial waters and the source of all
good things. In the midst of the lake formed by
the waters of the sacred source grows a single mi
raculous tree, similar to the Jambu of the Indian
myth, or else two trees, corresponding exactly to
those of the Biblical Gan-Eden. . . . There is the
garden of Ahuramazda, like that of Brahma on Meru.
Thence the waters descend toward the four cardinal
points in four large streams, which symbolize the
four horses attached to the car of the goddess of the
sacred source, Ardvi - Sura - Anahita. These four
horses recall the four animals placed at the source
of the paradisaic rivers in the Indian conception." 2
to Pahlevi Texts, translated by E. W. West. Vol. v. of Sacred Books
of the East. Also Haug, Religion of the Par sees. 2d ed., Boston,
1878 : pp. 5, 190, 197, 203-205, 216, 255, 286, 316, 337, 361, 381, 387,
39°-
1 Darmesteter, l^he Zend-Avesta, ii. 174.
2 " Ararat and Eden." The Contemporarv Re-view, September, 1881,
MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY. 135
The Hellenic and Roman myths concerning the
" World -mountain " were numerous, but in later
times not a little confused, as Ideler has learnedly
shown.1 By some, as for example Aristotle, it was
identified with the Caucasus, and it was asserted
that its height was so prodigious that after sunset
its head was illuminated a third part of the night,
and again a third part before the rising of the sun
in the morning. This identification explains the
later legend, according to which, in order to prove his
rightful lordship of the world, Alexander the Great
plucked " the shadowless lance " (the earth's axis)
out of the topmost peak of the Taurus Mountains.2
More commonly the mount is called Atlas, or the
Atlantic mountain. Proclus, quoting Heraclitus, says
of it, "Its magnitude is such that it touches the
ether and casts a shadow of five thousand stadia in
length. From the ninth hour of the day the sun is
concealed by it, even to his perfect demersion under
Am. ed., p. 41. Compare the following : " L'Albordj des Perses cor
respond parfaitement au Merou des Hindous ; de meme que la tra
dition de ceux-ce divise la terre en sept D\vipas ou isles, de meme les
livres zends et pehlvis reconnaissent sept Keschvars ou contrees
groupees egalement autour de la montagne sainte," etc. — Religions de
rAntiquite. Creuzer, trad. Guigniaut. Tom. I., pt. ii., p. 702, note.
1 On the Homeric and Hesiodic Olympos, see below, part sixth,
chapter second.
2 " Auch in den Alexandersagen des Mittelalters ist die Erinnerung
an das Naturcentrum im Nordpol erhalten, und zwar in merkwiirdiger
Uebereinstimmung der morgen- und abendlandischer Dichter. In
dem altenglischen Gedicht von Alisaunder (bei Jacobs und Uckert,
8.461) findet Alexander der Grosse auf dem hochsten Gipfel des Tau
rus eine schattenlose Lanze, von welcher geweissagt war, wer sie aus
dem Boden reissen konne, werde Herr der Welt werden. Alexander
aber riss sie heraus. Die Lanze ist ein Sinnbild der Weltachse. Sie
weist vom hochsten Berge auf den Nordpol hin, und ist schattenlos
weil von dort urspriinglich alles Licht ausging." — Menzel, Die vor~
christliche Unsterblichkeitslehre, Bd. i., S. 86.
136 PARADISE FOUND.
the earth." 1 Strabo's account of it is full of the
legendary features characteristic of an earthly Par
adise. The olive - trees were of extraordinary ex
cellence, and there were there seven varieties of
refreshing wine. He informs us that the grape
clusters were a cubit in length, and the vine-trunks
sometimes so thick that two men could scarcely
clasp round one of them. Herodotus describes the
mountain as " very tapering and round ; so lofty,
moreover, that the top (they say) cannot be seen,
the clouds never quitting it either summer or win
ter. The natives call this mountain l The Pillar
of Heaven,' and they themselves take their name
from it, being called Atlantes. They are reported
not to eat any living thing and never to have any
dreams."2 Equally strange is the story told by
Maximus Tyrius, according to which the waves of
the ocean at high water stopped short before the
sacred mount, "standing up like a wall around its
base, though unrestrained by any earthly barrier."
" Nothing but the air and the sacred thicket prevent
the water from reaching the mountain." According
to other ancient legends, a river of milk descended
from this marvelous height. Noticing such curious
stories, Pliny well describes the mountain asfabulo-
sissimum?
1 See Taylor's Notes on Pausamas, vol. iii., p. 264.
2 Herodotus, Bk. iv. 184.
3 " When Cleanthes asserted that the earth was in the shape of a
cone, this, in my opinion, is to be understood only of this mountain,
called Meru in India. Anaximenes said that this column was plain
and of stone : exactly like the Meru-pargwette of the inhabitants of Cey
lon, according to Mr. Joinville in the seventh volume of the Asiatic
Researches. This mountain, says he, is entirely of stone, 68,000
yojanas high, and 10,000 in circumference from top to bottom. The
divines of Tibet say it is square, and like an inverted pyramid. Some
MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY. 137
Everywhere, therefore, in the most ancient ethnic
thought, — in the Egyptian, Akkadian, Assyrian,
Babylonian, Indian, Persian, Chinese, and Greek, —
everywhere is encountered this conception of what,
looked at with respect to its base and magnitude, is
called the " Mountain of the World," but looked at
with respect to its glorious summit and its celestial
inhabitants is styled the " Mountain of the Gods."
We need not pursue the investigation further.
Enough has been said to warrant the assertion of
Dr. Samuel Beal : "It is plain that this idea of a
lofty central primeval mountain belonged to the un
divided human race." ! Elsewhere the same learned
sinologue has said, "I have no doubt — I can have
none — that the idea of a central mountain, and of
the rivers flowing from it, and the abode of the gods
upon its summit, is a primitive myth derived from
the earliest traditions of our race." 2
The ideas of the ancients respecting the Under
world, that is the southern hemisphere of the earth
beyond the equatorial ocean, are sufficiently set forth
in the writer's essay on " Homer's Abode of the
Dead," printed in the Appendix of the present work.3
In all these studies one important caution has too
often been overlooked. In interpreting the cosmo-
logical and geographical references of ancient relig
ious writings it should never be forgotten that the
ideas expressed are often poetical and symbolical, —
of the followers of Buddha in India insist that it is like a drum, with a
swell in the middle, like drums in India ; and formerly in the West,
Leucippus said the same thing." — F. Wilford, in Asiatic Researches,
vol. viii., p. 273.
1 Buddhist Literature in China, p. 147.
2 Ibid., p. xiv.
8 See APPENDIX, Sect. VI.
138 PARADISE FOUND.
religious ideas, hallowed in sacred song and story.
If, some thousands of years hence, one of Macaulay's
archaeologists of New Zealand were to try to ascer
tain and set forth the geographical knowledge of the
Christian England of to-day by a study of a few
fragments of English hymns of our period, critically
examining every expression about a certain wonder
ful mountain, located sometimes on earth and some
times in heaven, and bearing the varying name of
"Sion" or " Zion ; " then making a microscopical
study of all the references to the strange river, which
according to the same texts would seem to be va
riously represented as udark," and as possessed of
" stormy banks," and as " rolling between " the
singer living in England and the abode of the dead
located in Western Asia, and called "Canaan," — a
river sometimes addressed and represented as so
miraculously discriminating as to know for whom to
divide itself, letting them cross over " dry shod," —
surely, under such a process of interpretation, even
the England of the nineteenth century would make
in geographical science a very sorry showing. Or
again, if some Schliemann of a far-off future were to
excavate the site of one of the dozen American vil
lages known by the name of " Eden," and, finding
unequivocal monumental evidence that it was thus
called, were thereupon to conclude and teach that
the Americans of the date of that village believed its
site to be the true site of the Eden of Sacred His
tory, and that here the race of man originated, this
would be a grave mistake, but it would be a mistake
precisely similar to many an one which has been
committed by our archaeologists in interpreting and
reconstructing the geography of the ancients.
MYTHICAL GEOGRAPHY. 139
In concluding this sketch of ancient cosmology
one further question naturally and inevitably thrusts
itself upon us. It is this : How are the rise and the
so wide diffusion of this singular world-view to be
explained ? In other words, how came it to pass
that the ancestors of the oldest historic races and
peoples agreed to regard the North Pole as the true
summit of the earth and the circumpolar sky as the
true heaven ? Why were Hades and the lowest hell
adjusted to a south polar nadir ? The one and sole
satisfactory explanation is found in the hypothesis
of a primitive north polar Eden. Studied from that
standpoint, the appearances of the universe would be
exactly adapted to produce this curious cosmolog-
ical conception. Thus the very system of ancient
thought respecting the world betrays the point of
view from which the world was first contemplated.
This, though an indirect evidence of the truth of our
hypothesis, is for this very reason all the more con
vincing.
CHAPTER II.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN ANCIENT JAPANESE
THOUGHT.
A ccording to the most ancient texts Japan is the centre of the earth. — W. E.
GRIFFIS.
ACCORDING to the earliest cosmogony of the Jap
anese, as given in their most ancient book, the Ko-
ji-ki,1 the creators and first inhabitants of our world
were a god and goddess, Izanagi and Izanani by
name. These, in the beginning, — we quote from
Sir Edward Reed, — " standing on the bridge of
heaven, pushed down a spear into the green plain of
the sea, and stirred it round and round. When they
drew it up the drops which fell from its end consoli
dated and became an island. The sun-born pair
descended on to the island, and planting a spear in
the ground, point downwards, built a palace round
it, taking that for the central roof-pillar. The spear
1 Speaking of this work, M. Leon de Rosny calls it 1'un des monu
ments les plus authentiques de la vieille litterature japonaise, and
says, "Nous devons non seulement a cet ouvrage la connaissance de
1'histoire du Nippon anterieure au vii. siecle de notre ere, mais 1'ex-
pose le plus autorise de 1'antique mythologie sintauiste. II y a meme
ce fait remarquable, que les dieux primordiaux du pantheon japonais,
mentionnes dans ce livre, ne figurent deja plus au commencement du
Yamato bumi, qui est posterieur seulement de quelques annees a la
publication du Koji ki. Ces dieux primordiaux paraissent oublies,
ou tout au moins negliges, dans les ouvrages indigenes qui ont paru
par la suite." Questions d1 Archeologie Japonaise. Paris, 1882 : p. 3.
An English translation of the Ko-ji-ki, by B. H. Chamberlain, has
just appeared in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. v.
PARADISE IN JAPANESE THOUGHT. 141
became the axis of the earth, which had been caused
to revolve by the stirring round." l
This island, however, was the Japanese Eden.
Here originated the human race. Its name was
Onogorojima, "The Island of the Congealed Drop."
Its first roof-pillar, as we have seen, was the axis of
the earth. Over it was " the pivot of the vault of
heaven." 2 Mr. Reed, who has no theory on the
subject to maintain, says, "The island must have
been situated at the Pole of the earth." 3 In like
manner, with no idea of the vast anthropological
significance and value of the datum, Mr. Griffis re
marks, "The island formed by the congealed drops
was once at the North Pole, but has since been
taken to its present position in the Inland Sea." '
Here, then, is the testimony of the most ancient
1 Sir Edward J. Reed, Japan^ vol. i., 31.
2 Leon Metchnikoff, L' Empire Japonais. Geneve, 1881 : p. 265.
8 Ibid. — Our interpretation of ancient cosmology and of the true
Eden location at once brings light into the whole system of Japanese
mythology. In the following, extracted from Mr. Griffis, no one has
ever before known what to make of " the Pillar of Heaven and Earth"
"the Bridge of Heaven" the position of primitive Japan "on the top
of the globe" and at the same time at " the centre of the Earth : " —
*' The first series of children born were the islands of Japan. . . . Japan
lies on the top of the globe. ... At this time heaven and earth were
very close to each other, and the goddess Amaterazu being a rare and
beautiful child, whose body shone brilliantly, Izanagi sent her up the
Pillar that united heaven and earth, and bade her rule over the high
plain of heaven. ... As the earth-gods and evil deities multiplied,
confusion and discord reigned, which the sun goddess (Amaterazu),
seeing, resolved to correct by sending her grandson Ninigi to earth to
rule over it. Accompanied by a great retinue of deities, he descended
by means of the floating Bridge of Heaven, on which the divine first
pair had stood, to Mount Kirishima. After his descent, heaven and
earth, which had already separated to a considerable distance, receded
utterly, and further communication ceased. . . . According to the most
ancient texts Japan is the centre of the earth."
4 McClintock and Strong, Cydopadia, vol. ix., p. 688. Art. " Shinto."
142 PARADISE FOUND.
Japanese tradition. Nothing could be more un
equivocal. Izanagi's divinely precious spear of jade,1
like the transverse jade -tube of the ancient Shu
King,2 is an imperishable index, not only to the
astronomical attainments of prehistoric humanity,
but also to humanity's prehistoric abode.
In Part fifth, chapter fourth, further illustration
of the Japanese conception of the origin of their
race will be given.
1 £mile Burnouf, " La pique celeste de jade rouge." — La Mytho-
logie des Japonais d'apres le Koku-si-Ryaku. Paris, 1875 : p. 6.
2 " He examined the pearl-adorned turning sphere, with its trans
verse tube of jade, and reduced to a harmonious system the move
ments of the Seven Directors." Legge's Translation in The Sacred
Books of the East, vol. iii., p. 38. Professor Legge once examined
this passage in my presence, and found unexpected corroboration of
the interpretation which identifies " the transverse tube of jade " with
the axis of heaven.
CHAPTER III.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN CHINESE THOUGHT.
The rationalistic genius of the matter-of-fact Chinese is apparent even in the
way in which they conceived their primitive history ; and in this respect, as in
many others, it brings them into nearer relations with the best modern science
than belong to the other Oriental races. — SAMUEL JOHNSON (of Salem).
It is through this wonderfully pure seer [Lao-tse], as it appears to me, that
we ascend to the primitive revelation oj truth given to this ancient people. —
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING.
APPROACHING this theme, a reviewer of the Shin
Seen Tung Keen — a " General Account of the Gods
and Genii," in twenty-two volumes — offers the fol
lowing observations : " All nations have some tradi
tion of a Paradise, a place of primeval happiness, a
state of innocence and delight. The Tauists a are
by no means behind in referring to an abode of last
ing bliss, which, however, still exists on earth. It is
called Kwen-lun." 2
In another article, by a student of Chinese sources,
it is stated, " This locality, being the abode of the
gods, is Paradise ; it is round in form, and like Eden
it is ' the mount of assembly.' " 3
Like the Gan-Eden of Genesis it is described as a
1 " Die Secte der Tao-sse hat die Sagen und religiosen Gebrauche
des alten China's noch am Meisten aufbewahrt." Liiken, Traditionen
des Menschengeschlechtes, p. 77. " Lao-tse abounds in sentences out
of some ancient lore, of which we have no knowledge but from him."
Samuel Johnson, Oriental Religions — China. Boston, 1877: p. 861.
2 The Chinese Repository^ vol. vii., p. 519.
8 The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, vol. iv., p. 94-
Compare Isaiah xiv. 13, 14.
144 PARADISE FOUND.
garden, with a marvelous tree in the midst ; also with
a fountain of immortality, from which proceed four
rivers, which flow in opposite directions toward the
four quarters of the earth.1
In the language of the writer first quoted in this
chapter, "Sparkling fountains and purling streams
contain the far-famed ambrosia. One may there
rest on flowery carpeted swards, listening to the
melodious warbling of birds, or feasting upon the
delicious fruits, at once fragrant and luscious, which
hang from the branches of the luxuriant groves.
Whatever there is beautiful in landscape or grand
in nature may also be found there in the highest
state of perfection. All is charming, all enchanting,
and whilst Nature smiles the company of genii de
lights the ravished visitor." 2
Where, now, is this Paradise mountain located ?
At the North Pole.
The sentence before those last quoted reads as
follows : " Here is the great pillar that sustains the
world, no less than 300,000 miles high."
This world-pillar, or axis of the earth, is some
times conceived of as slender enough for the use of
a climber. Thus we read, " One of the Chinese
kings, anxious to become acquainted with the de
lightful spot, set out in search of it. After much
wandering he perceived the immense column spoken
of, but, trying to ascend it, he found it so slippery
that he had to abandon all hopes of gaining his end,
and to endeavor by some mountain road which was
rugged in the extreme to find his way to Paradise.
When almost fainting with fatigue, some friendly
1 Liiken, Traditionen des Menschengeschlechtes, p. 72.
2 The Chinese Repository, vol. vii., p. 519.
PARADISE IN CHINESE THOUGHT. 145
nymphs, who had all the time from an eminence
compassionated the weary wanderer, lent him an
assisting hand. He arrived there, and immediately
began to examine the famous spot." 1
Such a pillar connecting the earth with an upper
Paradise, and affording a means of access thereto,
necessarily recalls to mind the analogous conception
set forth in the Talmud : "There is an upper and a
lower Paradise. And between them, upright, is fixed
a pillar ; and by this they are joined together ; and
't is called ' The Strength of the Hill of Sion.' And
by this Pillar on every Sabbath and Festival the
righteous climb up and feed themselves with a glance
of the Divine majesty till the end of the Sabbath or
Festival, when they slide down and return into the
lower Paradise." 2
In this conception we have a twofold Paradise, one
celestial and one terrestrial. Among the Chinese
1 The Chinese Repository, vol. vii., p. 520.
2 Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, Bd. ii., p. 318. (English
translation, vol. ii., p. 25.) Compare Schulthess, Das Paradies, p.
354. Also the story of Er, the Pamphylian, in which we have the
same " column, brighter than the rainbow, extending right through the
whole heaven and through the earth ; " here also the spirits visiting
the earth are allowed seven days before ascending. Plato, Republic,
616. Also the Chaldaeo-Assyrian conception of " the celestial and ter
restrial Paradises, supposed to be united by means of the Paradisaic
Mount itself." The Oriental and Biblical Journal. Chicago, 1880 :
p. 173. Also the Greek idea: " Sehr merkwiirdig ist, was Pindar
(Olymp., ii., 56 f.) von den Seligen sagt. Wenn sie namlich auf der
Insel der Seligen sich befmden, steigen sie zum Thurme des Chronos
empor. Dieser Hohentendenz entspricht nun die alte Vorstellung
vom Naturcentrum am Nordpol und so fiihren uns denn auch die grie-
chischen Dichter auf einem langen Umwege doch zuletzt nach Nysa,
wo uns die griechischen Kiinstler alle Wonnen des dionysischen Him-
mels aufthun." Menzel, Die vorchristliche Unsterblichkeitslehre, ii.,
p. 10. Finally, the Japanese idea in Griffis, The Mikadtfs Empire,
p. 44.
10
146 PARADISE FOUND.
we find the same. The upper is situated in the cen
tre or pole of heaven, the lower directly under it, at
the centre or pole of the northern terrestrial hemi
sphere. The Pillar connecting them is of course
the axis of the heavenly vault.
We quote : " Within the seas, in the valleys of
Kwen-lun, at the northwest is Shang-te's Lower
Recreation Palace. It is eight hundred le square,
and eighty thousand feet high. In front there are
nine walls, inclosed by a fence of precious stones.
At the sides there are nine doors, through which the
light streams, and it is guarded by beasts. Shang-
te's wife also dwells in this region, immediately over
which is Shang-te's Heavenly Palace, which is situ
ated in the centre of the heavens [the celestial pole],
as his earthly one is in the centre of the earth [the
terrestrial pole]." *
There can be no mistaking this use of the term
"centre" for pole, for the Chinese astronomers
expressly state, "The Polar star is the centre of
heaven." 2
Elsewhere, instead of Kwen-lun being a World-
pillar in the "valleys," or "plain," or "mound" of
the terrestrial Paradise, we find it described as a stu
pendous heaven-sustaining mountain, marking the
centre or pole of the earth : " The four quarters of
the earth incline downwards. . . . On this vast plain
or mount, surrounded on all sides by the four seas,
arise the mountains of Kwen-lun, the highest in the
world according to the Chinese geographers : ' Kwen-
1 The Chinese Recorder, vol. iv., p. 95.
2 The Chinese Repository, vol. iv., p. 194. Compare Menzel : " Der
Polarstern heisst Palast der Mitte." Unsterblichkeitslehre, Bd. i,
p. 44.
PARADISE IN CHINESE THOUGHT. 147
lun is the name of a mountain ; it is situated at the
northwest, fifty thousand le from the Sung-Kaou
mountains, and is the centre of the earth. It is eleven
thousand le in height ' (Kang-he)." 1
The significance of the foregoing as respects the
location of Paradise cannot be doubtful. But com
pare further the sixth head under chapter third of
Part fifth ; also chapter fourth of the same Part.
1 The Chinese Recorder, vol. iv., p. 94.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN EAST ARYAN OR
HINDU THOUGHT.
TJte reader cannot have failed to be struck, as the first explorers of Sanskrit
literature have been, with tfa close analogy, -we might even say the perfect iden
tity , of all the essential features of the typical description of Mount Meru in the
Puranas with the topography of Eden in the second chapter of Genesis. The gar
den of Eden (gan-Eden], the garden of God (gan-Elohim, Ezek. xxviii. 13), which
is guarded by the anointed and protecting Kerub (Ezek. xxviii. 14, 16), is placed,
like the garden of delight of the gods of India, on the summit of a mountain, the
holy mountain of God (har qodesh Elohim (Ezek. xxviii. 14, 16), all sparkling with
precious stones (Ibid.).*- — LENORMANT.
IN what kind of a world lived the ancient Brah
man ? And what was his conception of the location
of the cradle of the race ?
One of the oldest of the elaborate geographical
treatises of India is the Vishnu Purana. Taking
this as a guide, let us place ourselves alongside one
of the ancients of the country, and look about us.
First, we will look to the South, far down the
Indian Ocean. What was supposed to lie in that
1 The continuation of the passage is as follows : " The Jehovistic
writer does not say so in Genesis, but the prophets are express in this
respect. The tree of life grows ' in the midst of the garden ' (bethoch
haggan} with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. ii. 9 ;
iii. 3), exactly like the tree Jambu, in the centre of the delightful pla
teau which crowns the height of Meru. A river goes out of Eden to
water the garden, and from thence it divides and forms four arms
(Gen. ii. 10). This corresponds in the most precise manner with the
way in which the spring Ganga, after having watered the Celestial
Land, or the Land of Joy at the summit of Meru, forms four lakes on
the four counterforts of this holy mountain, whence it afterwards flows
out in four large rivers toward the four cardinal points."
PARADISE IN HINDU THOUGHT. 149
direction ? To begin with their distribution of the
different quarters of the world among the gods, this
is the quarter belonging to Yama, the god of the
dead : —
" May he whose hands the thunder wield
Be in the East thy guard and shield ;
May Yama's care the South befriend,
And Varun's arm the West defend ;
And let Kuvera, lord of gold,
The North with firm protection hold." l
In precise accordance with our Key to Ancient
Cosmology, it is the direction of descent. North is
upwards (uttardt), south is downwards (adhardt}?
Hence the abode and kingdom of Yama is not only
to the south, but also below the level of India, i. e.,
on the under hemisphere, or, as Monier Williams lo
cates it, in " the lower world." 3 All Hindu litera
ture is full of similar references. The exact time
required for the soul's journey was supposed to be
four hours and forty minutes.4
In this direction, evidently, we shall vainly seek
a paradise. Let us turn to the North and " ascend."
1 Griffiths, Ramayana, ii. 20.
2 Zimmer, Altindisches Leben. Berlin, 1879 : p. 359.
3 Yama : " one of the eight guardians of the world as regent of the
South quarter, in which direction in some region of the lower world
is his abode called Yama-pura ; thither a soul, when it leaves the
body, is said to repair, and there, after the recorder, Citra-gupta, has
read an account of its actions, kept in a book called Agra-Sandani,
receives a just sentence, either ascending to heaven, or to the world
of the Pitris, or being driven down to one of the twenty-one hells."
— Williams, Sanskrit Dictionary, sub. " Yama."
4 " The soul is believed to reach Yama's abode in four hours and
forty minutes ; consequently a dead body cannot be burned until that
time has passed after death." — W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, Ve-
dic and Puranic. London, 1882 : Art. "Yama." See, also, Muir,
Sanskrit Texts, v. 284-327, and our references in " Homer's Abode
of the Dead."
150 PARADISE FOUND.
First, of course, we come to the Himalaya range,
the Himavat of Indian geography. All that por
tion of the earth lying between this mountain range
and the great ocean to the South constitutes one of
the seven, or nine, " varshas," or divisions of the
habitable (upper) hemisphere. Its name is Bharata.
If now our ancient Hindu could proceed due North
and cross the Himavat, — which he does not think
possible to mortals, — he would find himself in Kim-
purusha, an equally extensive but more elevated and
beautiful varsha, extending northward till bounded
by a second range of incredibly lofty mountains,
the Himakuta. Still " ascending," or going North,
until he had crossed this division and passed the
Himakuta, he would enter Harivarsha, a still loftier
and diviner country. This extends, in turn, to an
other boundary range, the Nishadha, crossing which
one would come to Ilavrita, the central varsha of all,
which occupies the top as well as the centre of the
world. To the adequate description of the beauty
and glory and preciousness of this country no tongue
is equal. In its centre is situated the mount of the
gods, "Beautiful Meru," described in chapter first
of the present Part. It is at the Pole, and around
it revolve all constellations of heaven. It is the
centre of the habitable world.
Continuing our imaginary journey across this di
vine country of Ilavrita, crossing of course this co
lossal central mountain, we should now begin to de
scend on the meridian opposite to that on which we
ascended on the India side of the globe. The boun
dary of the central region on that side is the Nila
range, then comes the varsha of Ramyaka ; its
farther boundary is the Sweta range, beyond which
PARADISE IN HINDU THOUGHT. 151
is the varsha of Hiranmaya. Still descending, we
cross this and the range which bounds it on the far
ther side, the Sringin, and we are in Uttarakuru, the
last of the seven grand divisions of the earth, the
one corresponding, in distance from Meru, to Bha-
rata, or our starting-point. It, of course, is on the
equatorial ocean, and here too we have only to cross
this ocean in order to reach the underworld.
The way in which the varshas are made to num
ber " nine " is by subdividing the great central cross-
section of the hemispherical surface, leaving Ilavrita
a perfect square on the top of the globe, the land
descending eastward to the sea being called Bhad-
rasva, and the corresponding country to the West
being called Ketumala.
To assist the reader to a clearer conception of
this sacred geography we give herewith two cuts,
one of which presents in outline the side-aspect of
the Puranic earth, and the other a flat polocentric
projection of its upper hemisphere.1
Having now answered our first question, and
showed in what kind of a world the ancient Hindu
lived, we pass to the second : " What was his con
ception of the location of the cradle of the race ? "
The question is answered the moment we say that
in the Hindu conception and tradition man pro
ceeded from Meru. His Eden-land was Ilavrita. It
was therefore at the Pole.
How strange that Lenormant could have written
the following, and still have imagined that the true
primeval Eden of the Hindu was anywhere else than
at the terrestrial Pole ! He says, " In all the leg-
1 See also APPENDIX, Sect. IV., "The Earth and the World of
the Hindus."
152 PARADISE FOUND.
ends of India the origin of mankind is placed on
Mount Meru, the residence of the gods, a column
which unites the sky to the earth. ... At first sight,
on reading the description of Mount Meru furnished
by the Puranas, it appears overcharged with so
many purely mythological features that one hesi-
The Earth of the Hindus, viewed from above.
i. Uttarakuru. 5. Harivarsha.
a. Hiranmaya. 6. Kimpurusha.
3. Ramyaka. 7- Bharata (India).
8. Ketumala. 9. Bhadrisva.
4. SU-MERU in Ila-vrita.
tates to believe that it has any basis in reality. To
realize these descriptions one must represent one's
self in the centre of a vast level and very elevated
surface, surrounded by various mountain-ranges, a
gigantic block, the axis of the world, raising its head
to the highest point of the heavens, whence there
THE EARTH OF THE HINDUS.
Side View of Upper Hemisphere.
PARADISE IN HINDU THOUGHT. 153
falls upon its summit, on the North Pole, the divine
Ganga, the source of all rivers, which there dis
charges itself into an ideal lake, the Manasa-Saro-
vara. . . . Meru, then, is at one and the same time
the highest part of the terrestrial world and the cen
tral point of the visible heaven, — the two having
been confounded through ignorance1 of the real
constitution of the universe : it is also, at one and
the same time, the north pole and the centre of the
habitable earth, Jambu-dwtpa, — literally of the conti
nent of the tree Jambu, the tree of life. Leaving
the higher basin of the mountain in which its wa
ters have at first collected the source, Ganga travels
seven times round the Meru in descending from the
abode of the seven Rishis of the Great Bear, to
empty itself afterward into four lakes placed on four
summits adjacent to this vast pyramid, and serving
as buttresses on its four sides. . . . Fed by the
waters of the celestial Ganga the four lakes in
their turn feed four terrestrial rivers which flow out
through the mouths of four symbolical animals.
These four great rivers water as many distinct re
gions, . . . and discharge themselves into four oppo
site seas, to the east, south, west, and north of the
central Meru. . . . The four lakes, the four rivers,
and the four oceans are composed of different liq
uids, corresponding to the four castes, and these
latter, with which are connected all the nations of
the human race, are reputed to have set out from
the four sides of Meru to people the whole earth." 2
1 Lenormant here follows the misleading arguments of Wilford in
Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., pp. 312, 313.
2 The Contemporary Review, Sept., 1881 : Am. ed., p. 39. Also
Les Origines de I'Histoire, torn. ii. I, ch. i. Compare Essai de Com-
mentairf des Fragments Cosmogoniques de Btrose. Paris, 1871 : pp.
154 PARADISE FOUND.
A similar illustration of the power of a wrong pre
possession is given us in the illustrious Carl Ritter,
who after expressly declaring that " the numberless
Puranas and their most diverse interpretations by
the Pundits teach that Meru is the middle of the
earth, and itself literally designates its centre and
axis? 1 thereupon in the coolest manner imaginable
proceeds to identify the same sacred height with
the mountains of Central Asia. Still worse is the
procedure of Mr. Massey, who after locating the
Garden of Eden on Mount Meru, and saying explic
itly, " The Pole, or polar region, is Meru? and again,
" Meru is the garden of the Tree of Life? neverthe
less tells us that in equatorial Africa beasts first
grew into men.2 Happier is the inconsistency of
Mr. Lillie, who, despite his adhesion to the flat-earth
theory of Hindu cosmology, still incidentally speaks
of "the blissful Garden" as "at the Pole."3
300-328. Also Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. ii., p. 139. '' In his In-
dische Studien, vol. i., p. 165, Weber speaks of the Aryan Indians be
ing driven by a deluge from their home, and coming from the North,
not from the West (as Lassen, i., 515 will have it), into India."
1 " Die zahllosen Puranas und ihre verschiedenartigsten Ausle-
gungen durch die Pundits lehren, dass Meru die Mitte der Erde sei,
und selbst wortlich auch das Centrum, die Axe, bezeichne." — Erd-
kunde, Bd. ii., p. 7.
2 The Natural Genesis, vol. ii., pp. 28, 162.
8 Buddha and Early Buddhism. London, 1882 : p. 8.
CHAPTER V.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN IRANIAN, OR OLD-PER
SIAN, THOUGHT.
A us den Angaben iiber die Paradiesstrome und den Lauf derselben erhellt nun
awk, wo -wir das Parodies selbst zu suchen haben, ndmlich im iiussersten Nor-
den. — FR. SPIEGEL.
ACCORDING to the sacred books of the ancient
Persians all the five-and-twenty races of men which
people the seven "keshvares" of the earth de
scended from one primitive pair, whose names were
Mashyoi and Mashya. The abode of this primitive
pair was in the keshvare Kvaniras, the central and
the fairest of the seven.1 Let us see if we can de
termine its location.
As a key to the old Iranian conception of the
world let us investigate the nature and location of
the " Chinvat bridge." This, like the Bifrost of the
Northmen and the Al Sirat of Islam, is the bridge
on which the souls of the dead, the evil as well as
the good, leave this world to enter the unseen.2 The
investigation is in itself and for its own sake full of
interest, for no writer on the ideas and faith of the
1 Bundahish, ch. xv., 1-30.
2 " This," says Professor Rawlinson, " is evidently the original of
Mohammed's famous ' way extended over the middle of hell, which
is sharper than a sword and finer than a hair, over which all must
pass.' " Ancient Monarchies, vol. ii., p. 339 n. Compare Sale's Koran,
Prelim. Discourse, Sect. iv. Professor Tiele thinks " it was borrowed
from the old Aryan mythology," and that it "was probably originally
the rainbow." History of Religion. London and Boston, 1877 : p. 177.
156 PARADISE FOUND.
Mazdaeans has ever professed to be able to tell
either the origin or true meaning of the myth. Most
interpreters have either carefully abstained from all
attempts at explanation, or have suggested that it
probably refers to the rainbow or to the Milky Way,
or to both.1 To dispose of these suggestions, let us
raise a few questions : —
1. Do we find in any part of the Avestan liter
ature any evidence that the Chinvat Bridge pos
sessed a curvilinear form ?
None.
2. Straight, or curved as a whole, were its two
ends conceived of as on a common level ?
No, for motion upon it in one direction is described
as upward, and in the opposite direction as down
ward.
3. Where was the upper end ?
In the heaven of Ahura Mazda, the Supreme God,
to whose abode the bridge conducts good souls.
4. But where is this abode ?
At the Northern Pole of the sky, as elsewhere
shown.
5. Where is the earthward end ?
It rests upon "the Daitik peak."
6. Is this peak in Persia ?
No ; it is part of a sacred mountain in Airan-vej,
the Eden of Iranian tradition.
7. And where is Airan-vej ?
" In the middle of the world."
1 "The Bridge of Souls cannot be always the Milky Way. . . .
Supposing the myths which once belonged to the Milky Way to have
been passed on to the Rainbow, the name of the former might also
have been inherited by the latter." C. F. Keary, Primitive Belief.
Lond., 1882 : p. 292. Comp. pp. 286-294, 347. Also Justi, Handbuch
der Zendsprache. Leipsic, 1864 : p. Hi, Jw£ voce " Cinvant."
PARADISE IN OLD-PERSIAN THOUGHT. 157
8. In what keshvare ?
In Kvaniras, the central of the seven divisions of
the earth, and the one in which men and the good
religion were first created.
9. And in what direction from Persia was Airan-
vej supposed to lie ?
Far to the North.
10. What natural " centre of the earth " is situ
ated in that direction ?
The North Pole.
11. What other evidence is there that the Daitik
peak is at the North Pole ?
The fact that the mountain of which this is simply
"the peak of judgment" is Hara-berezaiti, around
which the heavenly bodies revolve, and which, as all
allow, answers to the north polar Su-Meru of the
Hindus.1
12. Then the Chinvat bridge extends from the
North Pole of the heavens to the North Pole of the
earth : what is its shape ?
It is "beam-shaped" To quote the sacred book :
" That bridge is like a beam, of many sides, of whose
edges there are some which are broad, and there are
some which are thin and sharp ; its broad sides are
so large that its width is twenty-seven reeds, and its
sharp sides are so contracted that in thinness it is
just like the edge of a razor. And when the souls
of the righteous and wicked arrive, it turns to them
that side which is suitable to their necessities." 2
1 " Like the Meru of the Indians, Hara-berezaiti is the pole and
centre of the world, the fixed point around which the sun and the
planets perform their revolutions." — Lenormant, " Ararat and Eden,"
in the Contemporary Review, September, 1881. Am. ed., p. 41.
2 Dddistdn-i-Dinik, ch. xxi., 2-9. West, Pahlavi Texts, ii., pp. 47-49.
It is a curious coincidence that in Polynesian mythology Buataranga,
158 PARADISE FOUND.
The Chinvat bridge, then, is simply the axis of the
northern heavens, the Pillar of Atlas, the Talmudic
" Strength of the Hill of Sion," the column which in
the Chinese legend the emperor vainly sought to
climb ! In solving this long-standing problem we
have at the same time unlocked the mystery which
has hitherto attached to Bifrost and Al Sirat.1
But in locating our bridge we have located the
Persian Eden. And the location is unquestionably
at the North Pole. More than this, we have made
clear the fact that in the mythical or sacred geog
raphy of this ancient people the world of living men
was originally the northern circumpolar hemisphere.
The arrangement of the keshvares now becomes
entirely clear.2 Like the divinely beautiful Ilavrita
varsha of the Hindus, " illustrious Kvaniras " holds
the central position. In its centre, as in the centre
" guardian of the road to the invisible world," is wife to Ru, " the
supporter of the heavens." Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pa
cific. London, 1876: p. 51. So if Heimdallr's true station were at
the top of the rainbow, his title "son of nine mothers" (Vigfusson
and Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, London, 1883, ii. 465) would
have no such obvious significance as our interpretation gives.
1 One of the etymologies of Chinvat makes it the " Bridge of the
Judge." (Haug, Essays, 2d ed., p. 165 n.) As among the ancient
Assyrians, and some other peoples, the pole star has been styled
" the judge of heaven," it is possible that we have here at once the
origin of the name and a new identification of the position of the
mythical "beam-shaped" bridge. It is interesting to note in this
connection that Heimdallr, the Norse god who stands at the top of
Bifrost, is also, etymologically considered, the "World-judge" or
" World-divider." Menzel, Unsterblichkeitslehre , i. 134- In Plato
(Repub., 614 ff.) the judge stands at the bottom of the column. — For
grotesque survivals of the Bridge of Souls in folklore, see Tylor,
Primitive Culture, Index.
2 The diagram attempted by Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien,
p. 67, is inconsistent with the Bundahish, ch. v., 9. So must be every
attempt to arrange the keshvares on a flat earth.
PARADISE IN OLD-PERSIAN THOUGHT. 159
of Ilavrita, is the holiest mount in the world. Di
rectly over it is the true heaven. In this central
polar country North and South and East and West
would have no application ; but speaking from their
own geographical standpoint as south of Airan-vej,
the Persians located to the east of this holy central
Kvaniras the keshvare Savah, to the west Arzah, to
the south the keshvares Fradadafsh and Vidadafsh,
and to the north Vorubarst and Vorugarst.1 This
gives a map of the northern hemisphere which in a
Voraborsl/
V
Kvomros
The Earth of the Persians.
1 Darmesteter transliterates the names as follows : " The earth is
divided into seven Karshvares, separated from one another by seas
and mountains impassable to men. Arezahi and Savahi are the west
ern and eastern Karshvare ; Fradadhafshu and Vidadhafshu are in
the south ; Vouru£are.rti and Vouru£ar.rti are in the north ; flvzni-
ratha (Kvaniras) is the central Karshvare. ^z/aniratha is the only
Karshvare inhabited by man (Bundahish, xi. 3)." — Darmesteter, The
Zend-Avesta^ vol. ii., p. 123 n.
160 PARADISE FOUND.
plane polocentric projection may be represented as
on the foregoing page, the polar centre of course
being occupied by Hara-berezaiti.
It would be a fascinating task to reinterpret the
whole Avestan literature and mythology in the new
light of this recovered geography and cosmology, but
this would require a book of itself. It is worthy of
remark that the Venidad expressly calls the earth
" round," and apparently recognizes the existence of
its two far-separated poles.1 As we have seen, its
Chinvat bridge or beam, which is also an idea so an
cient as to be found in the Avesta itself (Farg., xix.,
30, et passim], is the axis of the world, conducting
good souls by an upward " flight " into the north
polar heaven of Ahura Mazda, but the evil by a fall
" headforemost " into the south polar hell.2 Airan-
vej, or " Old Iran," was the most natural name in
the world for the Iranians to give to the traditional
birth-place of their race.3 But all attempts to find it
" on the banks of the Aras " or " in the far-off lands
1 The Avesta (Darmesteter), i., p. 205 ; ii., pp. 143, 144. Compare
Windischmann's version of the Farvardin Yasht, i. 3 : " die beiden
Enden des Himmels." Studien, p. 313.
2 Apparently through the passage forced through the earth by
Aharman (Ahriman). See Z&d Sparam, ch. ii., 3, 4, 5. West, Pah-
lavi Texts, vol. i., p. 161. Also Bwidahish, iii. 13. Rhode, Die hei~
lige Sage des Zendvolks, p. 235. Windischmann's translation of Bun
dahish, ch. xxxi. (in Darmesteter numbered xxx.), seems especially to
support this idea : " Ahriman und die Schlange werden durch die Kraft
der Lobgesange geschlagen und hiilflos und schwach gemacht. Auf
jener Briicke des Himmels, auf welcher er herbeilief, wird er in die
tiefste Finsterniss zuriicklaufen. . . . Auch dies ist gesagt : Diese
Erde wird rein und eben sein : ausser dem Berg Cakat-Cinvar wird
ein Aufsteigen und ein Hinabtragen nicht sein." Zoroastrische Stti-
dien, p. 117. Compare Plato's " chasms," with ways leading hell-
ward and heavenward. Republic, 614.
3 F. C. Cook, Origins of Religion and Language. London, 1884 : p.
187.
PARADISE IN OLD-PERSIAN THOUGHT. l6l
of the rising sun " 1 are entirely useless. Equally
mistaken is the gloss which merely makes it " prim
itively" the mythic land where the disembodied
"souls of the righteous" are assembled by Ahura
Mazda.2 The same must be said of the assertion
that "the real site of the Airan-vej in its ancient and
original conception is to the east of the Caspian Sea
and of Lake Aral." 3 By every particular of its de
scription it is identified with the Daitik peak, with
Hara - berezaiti, with the polar " river," the polar
"tree," the polar " centre " of the upper hemisphere.
It is simply the Arctic Eden of humanity remem
bered as it was before the Evil One entered, and " by
his witchcraft counter-created winter and the worst
of plagues."4 This being the case we need not won
der that in a paper on "The Aryan Birth-place,"
read in January, 1884, before the Royal Society of
Literature, Mr. C. J. Stone expressed his strong
doubt of the current doctrine that the cradle of the
Aryans was the upper valleys of the Oxus.5 The
1 Darmesteter, The Avesta, i., p. 3.
2 Ibid., i, p. 15.
8 Lenormant, The Contemporary Review, Sept., 1881 (Am. ed.), p.
41. — Pietrement, Les Aryas, locates it just east of Lake Balkach, in
lat. 45°-47°. Grill is so bewildered by the number of attempted iden
tifications that he pronounces the land a purely mythical one, and denies
to the name all historic or geographic reality. Erzvater, i. 218, 219.
4 Fargard, i. 3. The passage continues, " There are (now) ten
winter months there, two summer months ; and those are cold for the
waters, cold for the earth, and cold for the trees." This reminiscence
of the on-coming of the Glacial Age at the Pole also appears in the
Flood legend of the American aborigines, particularly the Lenni-
Lenapi, or Delaware Indians. Rafinesque, The American Nations.
Phila., 1836 : Song III.
5 See also Dr. O. Schrader, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte.
Linguistisch - historische Beitrdge zur Erforschiing des indogerman-
ischen Alterthums. Jena, 1883. Dr. S. formerly adhered to the
162 PARADISE FOUND.
cradle of the whole Aryan family will at last be found
to be in " Airan, the Ancient," — and this in the
Arctic birth-place of man.
theory of a Mid- Asian Aryan birth-land, but has been led to abandon
it. Still more positive and emphatic is Karl Penka, who boldly lo
cates the original home of the Aryans in Scandinavia. See his
Origines Ariaccz. Linguistisch-ethnologische Untersuchungen zur dl-
testen Geschichte der Arischen Volker und Sprachen. Vienna, 1883.
Mr. John Gibb argues in the same direction, " The Original Home
of the Aryans," in The British Quart. Review, Oct., 1884.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN ANCIENT AKKADIAN,
ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN THOUGHT.
We have here, even to the most minute details, an exact reproduction of the
Aryan conception of Mount Meru, or Albordj, with its accessories. Here is the
abode of the heavenly hierarchy, located on the summit oftJie Kharsak, or sacred
mount which penetrates the heavens exactly in the region of the Pole star. — REV.
O. D. MILLER.
WE have already seen that the prehistoric inhab
itants of the Tigro-Euphrates basin, called by some
Akkadians, by others Sumerians, by yet others Ak-
kado-Sumerians, had like other Asiatic peoples their
Mountain of the World, on whose top was the celes
tial Paradise, and around which sun, moon, and stars
revolved. Our present task is to locate this moun
tain more exactly, and to consider its significance
for our hypothesis respecting the site of Eden.
That the earth, as conceived of by this ancient
people, was spherical is not at the present day ques
tioned. With their ideas probably no archseologist
was more familiar than the late Francois Lenor-
mant, and he expresses himself as follows : " ' The
Chaldees,' says Diodorus Siculus (lib. ii., 31), 'have
quite an opinion of their own about the shape of the
earth ; they imagine it to have the form of a boat
turned upside down, and to be hollow underneath.'
This opinion remained to the last in the Chaldaean
sacerdotal schools ; their astronomers believed in
it, and tried, according to Diodorus, to support it by
1 64 PARADISE FOUND.
scientific arguments. // is of very ancient origin, a
remnant of the ideas of the purely Akkadian period.
. . . Let us imagine, then, a boat, turned over ; not
such an one as we are in the habit of seeing, but a
round skiff, like those which are still used under the
name of Kufa on the shores of the lower Tigris and
Euphrates, and of which there are many represen
tations in the historical sculptures of the Assyrian
palaces ; the sides of this round skiff bend upwards
from the point of the greatest width, so that they
are shaped like a hollow sphere deprived of two
thirds of its height [?], and showing a circular open
ing at the point of division. Such was the form of
the earth according to the authors of the Akkadian
magical formulae and the Chaldaean astrologers of
after years. We should express the same idea in the
present day by comparing it to an orange of which
the top had been cut off, leaving the orange upright
upon the flat surface thus produced. The upper and
convex surface constituted the earth properly so
called, the inhabitable earth (ki) or terraqueous sur
face (ki-a\ to which the collective name kalama, or
the countries, is also given." 1
It is well known that in minor details Diodorus is
often found not altogether trustworthy. He was not
a critical reporter. While, therefore, in the above
quotation he has undoubtedly preserved to us one of
the ancient Chaldaean similes,2 by the use of which
the true figure of the earth was taught, I can but
think that the statement as to the hollowness of the
1 Chaldaan Magic, p. 150.
2 The figure was also used by the Egyptians, and other ancient na
tions. See Wilford, in Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., p. 274. Also
articles and works on " The Ark " and " Arkite Symbols."
PARADISE IN AKKADIAN THOUGHT. 165
earth underneath is an unauthorized inference, sug
gested by the hollow boat, and made by the compar
atively uninstructed Greek solely upon his own re
sponsibility. It is true that, in the same work from
which the above extract is taken, Lenormant endeav
ors to adjust Akkadian cosmology to such a notion
of a hollow sphere, saying, " The interior concavity
opening from underneath was the terrestrial abyss,
ge, where the dead found a home (kur-nu-de, ki-gal,
aralli). The central point in it was the nadir, or, as
it was called, ' the root,' uru> the foundation of the
whole structure of the world ; this gloomy region wit
nessed the nocturnal journey of the sun."1 But noth
ing can be more evident on examination than that
this attempt involves the writer in at least three in
consistencies : First, if the sun visits the interior of
the earth at night, its proper orbit cannot be round
and round the Mountain of the World to the north
east of Babylonia, as our author elsewhere repre
sents. Second, if aralli, the abode of the dead, is in
the interior of the hollow earth, it cannot be to the
northeast of Babylonia, as it is represented to be in
the context. Third, if the earth was conceived of
as hollow, of course its whole central portion was
empty space; but according to this presentation its
central point "was called 'the root,' uru, the foun
dation of the whole structure of the world." Surely
the foundation of the world can scarcely have been
supposed to be mere emptiness. To a layman in
these studies this uru would much rather suggest
1 Ibid., p. 150. — It is worthy of note that the expression "root"
of the world, or " root-land," is applied to the same subterranean
region of darkness in Japanese mythology. See " Shintoistn," by
Griffis in McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, vol. ix., p. 688.
166 PARADISE FOUND.
the antarctic Tap-en-to mountain of ancient Egyp
tian thought, the Ku-Meru of ancient India.
But it is time to return to the Akkadian, or Ak-
kado-Sumerian, mountain of the gods. Again we
quote Lenormant : " Above the earth extended the
sky (ana), spangled with its fixed stars (mul), and
revolving round the Mountain of the East (Kharsak
Kurra), the column which joins the heavens and the
earth, and serves as an axis to the celestial vault.
The culminating point in the heavens, the zenith
(nuzkti),1 was not this axis or pole ; on the contrary,
it was situated immediately above the country of
Akkadia, which was regarded as the centre of the
inhabited lands, whilst the mountain which acted as
a pivot to the starry heavens was to the northeast of
this country. Beyond the mountain, and also to the
northeast, extended the land of aralli, which was
very rich in gold, and was inhabited by the gods and
blessed spirits." 2
Here we have the " Mountain of the East " lo
cated, not in the east, but in the northeast. Else
where our author recognizes most fully the identity
of this mount with the Har-Moed of Isaiah xiv. 14,
and the difficulty of placing it anywhere but at the
North Pole.3 He adduces from the cuneiform texts
no evidence whatever for a location to the " north
east," and seems to fix upon that direction only as a
compromise of his own. " Nous devons conclure " is
his language. His only reason for thinking of any
other position than one due north appears to be a
cuneiform expression which seems to make Khar
sak Kurra at the same time " the mountain of the
1 Paku in the French edition. 2 Chaldaan Magic, p. 150.
8 Fragments de B erase, pp. 392, 393.
PARADISE IN AKKADIAN THOUGHT.
This, in reality, instead of being a rea
son for searching among the mountains to the east
of Assyria or Babylonia, is, when rightly understood,
precisely an additional reason for looking to the
north.2
One other statement in the extract calls for no
tice. The writer seems to have anticipated that his
readers would inevitably locate a mountain, described
as "the column which joins the heavens and the
earth, and serves as an axis to the celestial vault,"
under the celestial pole ; and believing that the
cuneiform texts which locate the celestial pole di
rectly over Akkad (or Akkadia), " the centre of the
inhabited lands," to be inconsistent with such a loca
tion, he introduces the remark that " the culminat
ing point in the heavens " was " not the axis or pole ;
on the contrary, it was situated immediately over
the country of Akkadia, which was regarded as the
centre of the inhabited lands, whilst the mountain
which acted as a pivot to the starry heavens was to
the northeast of this country."
1 The following from his latest account of the mountain will be val
ued : " La 'montagne des pays ' est le lieu ou resident les dieux. . . .
Elle est situee au nord, vient de nous dire Yescha' yahou ; a 1'est
disent les documents cuneiformes, ou 1'expression accadienne 'garsag
babbara= assyriene sad fit samsi, ' la montagne du levant,' apparait
comme synonyme de 1'accadien 'garsag kurkurra = assyrien sad ma-
tati ; d'ou nous devons conclure que c'est au nord-est du bassin de
1'Euphrate et du Tigre qu'on la supposait placee. C'est elle qui vaut
a 1'orient, son nom accadien de mer kurra et son nom assyrien de
sadti signifiant tous les deux ' le point cardinal de la montagne.' Et
le sens de ce terme est bien precise par la variante accadienne mer
'garsag, oil ce mot, dont le sens ' la montagne ' est incontestable, se
substitue a son synonyme kur, dont la signification cut pu etre dou-
teuse." — Les Origines de VHistoire, vol. ii., I, p. 126.
2 See Menzel, Die vorchristliche Unsterblichkeitslehre, Bd. i., chap
ter entitled " Der Sonnengarten am Nordpol," pp. 87-93.
1 68 PARADISE FOUND.
From so eminent an authority one naturally hesi
tates to differ ; but inasmuch as M. Joachim Menard,
in a work as recent as the one from which we have
quoted, while agreeing with M. Lenormant in mak
ing Akkad the traditional " centre of the earth," dif
fers from him in locating precisely in this central
country " the mountain on whose apex the heaven of
the fixed stars is pivoted," 1 we cannot avoid the
conclusion that Lenormant's distinction between the
zenith of Akkad and the celestial pole is based upon
a misapprehension, and is productive only of con
fusion. The solution of all difficulties is found the
moment the mythological Akkad is made a cir-
cumpolar mother-country, after which the Akkad of
the Tigro-Euphrates valley was commemoratively
named.2 This supposition is made all the easier by
three noteworthy facts : (i) that both the names
Akkad and Sumir are not Assyrio-Babylonian, but
loan - words from an older prehistoric tongue ; 3
(2) that the etymological signification and appella
tives of Akkad thoroughly identify it with the lofty
country at the north polar summit of the earth ; 4
1 " Le pays d' Akkad est regarde, d'apres les plus antiques tradi
tions, comme le centre de la terre ; c'est la que s'eleve la montagne
sur la cime de laquelle pivote le ciel des etoiles fixes." — Babylone et
la Chaldee. Paris, 1875 : P- 46-
2 Compare the primitive name of Babylon, Tin-tir-ki, " Place of
the Tree of Life." Lenormant, Beginnings of History, p. 85.
3 " II est certain que les mots Sumir et Akkad n'appartiennent pas
a la langue assyro-chaldeenne. Us sont propres a une langue anteri-
eure ; et nous savons, par les explications memes des Assyriens, que
Akkad veut dire ' montagne.' " — Menant, Babylone et la Chaldee.
Paris, 1875 : P- 47-
4 " Akkad is bovendien zeker een hoog land, geen lage vlakte bij de
zee, zooals ook een glosse het door tilla, hoogte, verklaart." C. P.
Tiele, Is Sumer en Akkad hetzelfde ah Makan en Melucha ? Am
sterdam, 1883 : p. 6. Compare last preceding note : Akkad = " mon-
PARADISE IN AKKADIAN THOUGHT. 169
and (3) that recently discovered tablets are compel
ling the Assyriologists to recognize two Akkads,
one in the Tigro-Euphrates valley and one much
farther to the North, though as yet none of these
scholars have looked as far in that direction as to
the Pole.1
If further proof were needed that the Kharsak
Kurra of the earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia
was identical with the north polar World-mountain
of Egypt and the surrounding Asiatic nations, it
would be found on investigating their conceptions of
the region of the disembodied dead and their notion
of a mountain of the rulers of the dead antipodal to
the mount of the gods. The Akkadians, like the
ancients generally, conceived of the realm of the
dead as located to the South. Their underworld be
ing simply the under or southern hemisphere of the
earth, they could not place it in any other direction.
In naming the cardinal points the Akkadians there
fore called the South "\hefunereal point." 2 In this
quarter was located the mount of the rulers of the
tagne." Also Smith, The Phonetic Values of the Cuneiform Charac
ters. London, 1871 : p. 17.
1 See Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaology, London,
Nov.-Dec., 1 88 1. "Mr. Pinches, in a further communication on the
"Paris Tablet [in cuneiform characters, but supposed to be Cappado-
cian in origin], observes : ' The question of the original home of the
Akkadians is affected thereby. ... As it seems that the country north
of Assyria was also called Akkad, as well as the northern part of
Babylonia, the neighborhood of Cappadocia as the home of the Ak
kadian race may be regarded as a very possible explanation, etc.' "
Brown, Myth of Kirkt. London, 1883 : p. 87. Finzi, in his Carta
del Mondo conosciuto dagli Assiri tracciata secondo le inscrizioni cunei-
formi, does not venture to locate either Akkad or Kharsak Kurra.
2 Chaldaan Magic, Eng. ed., p. 168, 169. Compare F. Finzi, Ri-
cerche per lo Studio delV Antichita Assira. Turin, 1872 : p. 109
note 1 8.
I/O PARADISE FOUND.
dead. It was the under or south polar projection
of the earth. It corresponded with the south polar
mount of demons in Hindu and in Egyptian thought.
Even Lenormant, whose mistake in locating the
mount of the gods in the East, logically leads to
the mistake of locating this mount of the rulers of
the dead in the West, still unconsciously gives evi
dence as to the true location by stating that it is
"situated in the low-down portions of the earth."1
And elsewhere he has told us that in the Akkadian
language to descend and to go southward were sy
nonymous expressions.2
With Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, then, we lo
cate the Akkadian Kharsak Kurra at the North.3
Once make the primeval Akkad the equivalent of
Ilavrita in Hindu, or of Kvaniras in Iranian, mythol
ogy, and all is perfectly plain and self-consistent.
The primitive Akkad is now "the centre of all
lands " in the same sense in which Ilavrita and
Kvaniras are in their respective systems. As in
both these systems the mount of the gods is in the
centre of this central country, so is Kharsak Kurra.
Su-Meru and Hara-berezaiti and Kwen-lun are
each exactly under the Pole-star, having it in their
zenith ; the same is true of Kharsak Kurra. As
every splendor of a divine abode crowns the top of
all the former, so is the summit of Kharsak resplen
dent beyond description. As the sun, moon, and
stars revolve around the Hindu and Iranian and
Chinese mounts, so is Kharsak the point " on which
1 " Situee dans les parties basses de la terre." — Origines, torn, ii
i, p. 134-
2 The Beginnings of History, p. 313 n. 4.
1 Wo lag das Paradies ? p. 1 21.
PARADISE IN AKKADIAN THOUGHT. I /I
the heaven of the fixed stars is pivoted." Moreover
from its top flows that Eden river, which, like Gunga
and Ardvi-Sura, waters the whole earth.1
Under these circumstances the candid reader will
probably be prepared to agree with the statement
of Mr. Miller which we have made the motto to this
chapter, and to say with Gerald Massey, only with
better understanding than his, "The cradle of the
Akkadian race was the ' Mountain of the World/
that 'Mount of the Congregation in the thighs of
the North.' . . . The first mount of mythology was
the Mount of the Seven Stars, Seven Steps, Seven
Stages, Seven Caves, which represented the celestial
North as the birth-place of the initial motion and
the beginning of time. This starting-point in
heaven above is the one original for the many copies
found on the earth below. . . . The Akkadians date
from Urdhu, the district of the northern Mountain
of the World." 2
1 Of this celestial source Lenormant speaks as follows : " . . . et
la fontaine divine Ghetim-kour-kou de la montagne des pays des Chal-
deens. Cette derniere fontaine, dont le nom est accadien et veut dir
' las ource qui enveloppe la montagne sainte/ est dite ' fille de 1'Ocean,'
mar at apsi, et invoquee comme une deesse douee d'une personal ite
vivante, pareille a celle que revet chez les Iraniens Ardvicoura-Ana-
hita. L'existence chez les Chaldeens de la croyance a un cours d'eau
mythique d'ou precedent tous les fleuves de la terre semble attestee
par la mention d'une riviere (dont le nom est malheureusement en
partie detruit sur la tablette qui contient ce reseignement) laquelle est
qualifiee ftumme na'r'i ' la mere des fleuves.' " Origines, torn. ii. i,
p. 133. Compare Siouffi, La Religion des Soubbhas ou Sabeens, Paris,
1880, p. 7 n., where the Euphrates is represented as rising in a celes
tial Paradise (Olmi Danhouro) under the throne of Avatha, whose
throne is under the Pole star.
2 A Book of Beginnings. London, 1881 : vol. ii., p. 520.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN
THOUGHT.
According to the Kamite legend related by Diodorus, Osiris and I sis lived to
g-ether in Nysa, or Paradise. Here there was a garden wherein the deathless
dwelt. Here they lived in perfect happiness until Osiris was seized with the de
sire to drink the water of immortality . Then he went forth in search of it, and
fell. . . • But an earlier couple than Osiris and I sis was Sevekh and Ta-urt, who
as the two constellations of the seven stars revolving round the Tree, or Pole, were
the primeval pair in Paradise. — The Natural Genesis.
THE mythical geography of the ancient Egyptians
is as yet too little known to allow us to hope for much
light from this quarter on the question of the site of
Eden. Even their cosmology is little understood,
and their scientific attainments are by many inexcus
ably underestimated. So good a scholar as Mr. Vil-
liers Stuart could recently write, " The Egyptians
had not attained to a sufficiently advanced point in
science to solve the problem of how the sun in his
daily course, having sunk behind the western hori
zon, returned to rise at the opposite quarter of the
heavens." 1 Nevertheless, as we desire to test our
hypothesis as far as possible by all most ancient tra
ditions and myths, whether favorable or unfavorable,
we must inquire whether anything can be ascer
tained as to the ideas of the ancient Egyptians touch-
1 Nile Gleanings. London, 1879 : p. 262. This is as bad as the
declaration of Lauer : " Und so glaube ich dass auch Homer nie
daran gedacht hat, wie die Sonne wieder aus dem Westen in den Osten
gelange." Nachlass. Berlin, 1851 : vol. i., p. 317.
PARADISE IN EGYPTIAN THOUGHT. 173
ing the form of the earth and the theatre of man's
first history.
The leading features of Egyptian cosmology, as
interpreted by the present writer, are in perfect ac
cord with the cosmological ideas of other ancient
nations as described in chapter first of the present
division. They may be briefly expressed in the six
following theses : —
1. That in ancient Egyptian thought the earth
was conceived of as a sphere, with its axis perpen
dicular and its North Pole at the top.
2. That in the earliest time Amenti was conceived
of neither as a cavern in the bowels of the earth,
nor as a region of the earth to the West, on the
same general plane as the land of Egypt, but was
simply the under or southern hemisphere of the
earth, conceived of as just described.
3. That the Tat pillar symbolized the axis of the
world (heaven and earth) upright in space.
4. That Ta nuter, whatever its later applications,
originally signified the extreme northern or topmost
point of the globe, where earth and heaven were fa
bled to meet.
5. That Cher-nut er was the inferior celestial hemi
sphere underarching Amenti.
6. That Hes and Nebt-ha (Isis and Nephthys) were
respectively goddesses of the North and South poles,
or of the northern and southern heavens.1
Assuming now, with Chabas, Lieblein, Lefevre,
and Ebers, that the earth of the ancient Egyptians,
1 In a brief communication published in T/ie Independent, New
York, Feb. 8, 1883, the critical attention of Egyptologists was respect
fully invited to these theses. Since that time much new evidence of
their correctness has come to light. See, for example, the new The
saurus Inscriptionum of Brugsch, pp. 176, 177, et passim.
174 PARADISE FOUND.
like that of the ancient Asiatic nations, was spherical,
what was their conception of its northern terminus ?
In chapter first of this Part, some indication has
been already given. But our present investigation
demands a fuller answer to this question. Turning
to the great work of Brugsch on the " Geographical
Inscriptions of the Old -Egyptian Monuments," we
find that the Egyptians considered the farthest limit
in the North to be "the four pillars or supports of
heaven." l The fact that these four supports of
heaven, instead of being situated in four opposite
directions from Egypt, are all in the farthest North,
is very significant. It shows that though the people
might speak of heaven as supported on four pillars,
it is not to be inferred therefrom that they conceived
of the earth as flat, and of the sky as a flat Oriental
roof one story above it.2 Brugsch himself, though
writing upon the supposition that the Egyptians'
earth was flat, avoids this mistake. His inference,
coming from one who had a traditional wrong theory
to support, is most interesting and valuable. He
says, " Inasmuch as these ' four supports of heaven,'
the northern limit of the earth as known to the
Egyptians, nowhere else occur as name of people,
land, or river, it seems to me most probable that we
have herein the designation of a high mountain
which was perhaps characterized by four peaks, or
1 " Die Ansicht von den Enden der Welt ist eine uralte und vielen
Volkern gemeinsame. . . . Als die ausserste Grenze im Siiden gait
den Egyptern das Meer CSar) und der Berg ap-en-to oder tap-en-to^
wortlich ' das Horn der Welt ; ' als die ausserste Grenze im Norden
dagegen ' die vier Stiitzen des Himmels.' " Geographische Inschriften,
Bd. ii., p. 35. Compare Taylor's Pausaniasy vol. iii., 255, bot.
2 Maspero, Les Contes Populaires de FEgypte Andenne. Paris,
1882 : pp. Ixi.-lxiii.
PARADISE IN EGYPTIAN THOUGHT. 175
which consisted of four ranges, from which pecu
liarity it received its name. Like all peoples of an
tiquity, — at least all those whose literature has
come down to us, — the Egyptians conceived of the
earth as rising toward the North, so that at last at
its northernmost point it joined the sky and sup
ported it." 1
In the Buddhist conception of Meru, as given in
chapter first of this Part, we have precisely the four-
peaked, heaven-supporting mountain which Brugsch
here describes : " Each of the four corners of the
mountain-top has a peak seven hundred yojanas
high." It is not impossible that in the four dwarfs
which support the dome of the modern Buddhist
temple we have a far-off survival of ancient Egypt's
" four supports of heaven." Certainly the Buddhist
temple-roofs symbolize the circumpolar heaven,2 and
a recent author, touching upon the latter' s mytholog
ical support, writes as follows : " This prop passing
through the earth and the heavens at the pole, indi
cated as we have seen by the Alpha of Draco, be
came the ' nail ' of the old astronomers, the point
round which all nature revolved. Between earth
and the celestial pole the prop idea was again
brought forward as the central column of a huge
conical mountain, Mount Meru, guarded at each
cardinal point by a mighty king. The four dwarfs
propping up some of the columns in the old Bud
dhist temples are evidently these four kings. . . .
When the prop pierced the highest heaven it was a
spire called the * tee,' and in Nepal it is confessedly
1 Geographische Inschriften^ Bd. ii., p. 37.
2 Koeppen, Die Religion dcs Buddhas, ii. 262.
176 PARADISE FOUND.
in all the temples the symbol of Adi Buddha, the
supreme, in his heavenly garden, Nandana grove." l
But returning from this merely curious question,
we remind ourselves that we have seen reason to
believe that the ancient Egyptians conceived of the
earth as a sphere, with a heaven-supporting moun
tain in the extreme North. In the extreme South
was another mountain, "The Horn of the World,"
represented as of incredible height (eight atur or
stadia).2 This corresponds so perfectly with the
earth of the Puranas, with its Su-Meru and Ku-Meru,
that we are irresistibly impelled to inquire whether
the parallelism extends any farther.
We take the question of the direction of the abode
of the dead. All agree that in Indian thought the
abode of the dead is in the South. So was it in the
thought of the ancient Egyptian. The recently dis
covered epitaph of Queen Isis-em-Kheb, mother-in-
law of Shishak, king of Assyria (circa 1000 B. c.),
thus reads : " She is seated all beautiful in her place
enthroned, among the gods of the South she is
crowned with flowers. She is seated in her beauty
in the arms of Khonsou, her father, fulfilling his
desires. He is in Amenti, the place of departed
spirits." 3
Again, in the mythological earth of India, the
abode of the dead, being the southern or under hemi
sphere, is looked upon as inverted. Viewed from
the standpoint of gods and men, it is bottom up
ward, and its inhabitants move about head down-
1 Lillie, Buddha and Early Buddhism, p- 50.
2 See first quotation from Brugsch above.
3 Villiers Stuart, The Funeral Tent of an Egyptian Queen. Lon
don, 1882 : p. 34. See also " Homer's Abode of the Dead " in the
APPENDIX, Sect. VI.
PARADISE IN EGYPTIAN THOUGHT.
ward.1 The same is true of Amenti, the Egyptian
underworld, and of its inhabitants.2
Again, in Hindu thought all deadly influences pro
ceed from the South, the abode of death ; all benefi
cent and life-giving influences from the North. The
same is true in ancient Egyptian thought. "It is
curious," says the English editor of Lenormant's
" Chaldaean Magic," 3 — "it is curious that in Egypt
all good and healing and life proceeded from the
West, the land of the setting sun, and all evil from
the East the land of its rising." The statement is
" curiously " incorrect. The North is the sacred
quarter, and from the North come life and blessing.
The North wind is the very breath of God. It
"proceeds from the nostrils of Knum and enlivens
all creatures." 4 It is one of the high prerogatives
of the blessed dead to "breathe the delicious air
of the North wind."5 That they may breathe it is
1 " The gods in heaven are beheld by the inhabitants of hell as
they move with their heads inverted." — Garrett, Classical Dictionary
of India : Art. " Naraka."
2 See Brugsch, Hieroglyphischcs Demotisches Wbrterbuch, S. 1331,
sub v. " Set," " Set-mati." Also chapter first of the present division.
8 Page 51. — Undoubtedly there are Egyptian texts in which the
sun-god Ra is represented as going into " the land of life " at his set
ting (see Brugsch, Thesattrtis Inscriptionum sEgyptiacarum,\ste Abth.,
Leipsic, 1883: p. 29), but this is made quite intelligible by Menzel's
" Sonnengarten am Nordpol " in his Vorchristliche Unsterblichkeits-
lehre,
4 Records of the Past, vol. iv., p. 67.
5 Ibid., p. 3. Compare the expression, " Give the sweet breath
of the North wind to the Osiris," Book of the Dead (Birch), p. 170 ;
also 311, 312. Gerald Massey remarks, "In Egyptian the Meh is
the North, the quarter of the waters, and the name of the cool wind
that breathed new life." The Natural Genesis, vol. ii., p. 168. The
following very curious passage from the apocryphal Book of Adam,
translated from the Ethiopic by Dillmann, shows that this ancient
Egyptian idea survived to a very late period: "Als der Hcrr den
12
PARADISE FOUND.
the prayer of bereaved affection.1 The " Fields of
Peace " are at the North of the fields of Sanehem-u.2
There is the proper home of the great god of whom
the Nile poet sang: —
" There is no building that can contain him !
" There is no counselor in thy heart !
" Thy youth delight in thee, thy children ;
" Thou directest them as King.
" Thy law is established in the whole land,
" In the presence of thy servants in the North"
Of the same god it is said : —
" He createth all works therein,
" All writings, all sacred words,
" All his implements, in the North." 3
As yet no texts have been discovered which rep
resent the earliest Egyptian ideas of the origin of
man and the location of his birth-place. One proof,
however, that man was conceived of as having pro
ceeded from the " Land of the Gods " in the North
appears in connection with the myth of the reign of
Ra. In Egyptian mythology, the reign of Ra was
like the primeval reign of Kronos ; the myth of it
was a reminiscence of the sinless Golden Age.4 But
Adam austrieb, wollte er ihn auf der Siidgrenze des Gartens nicht
wohnen lassen, weil der Nordivind, wann er darin bldset, den siissen
Geruch der Bdume des Gartens nach der Siidgegend hinfiikrt ; und
Adam sollte nicht die siissen Geriiche der Baume riechen, und die
Uebertretung vergessen, und sich iiber das was er gethan trosten,
und durch den Geruch der Baume befriedigt die Busse flir die Ueber
tretung unterlassen. Vielmehr liess der barmherzige Gott den Adam
in der Gegend westlich vom Garten wohnen." Dillmann, S. 13.
1 "Dans le papyre Boulak No. 3,4, 16, on souhait a un defunt:
•les agreables vents du Nord dans la AM Hi.' " — Brugsch, Diction'
naire Geographique. Leipsic, 1879 : p. 37.
2 Records of the Past, vol. iv., p. 122.
8 Ibid., p. 101.
4 Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de V Orient, p. 38.
PARADISE IN EGYPTIAN THOUGHT. 179
in those primeval and perfect days men still dwelt
in the country of the gods, which country, as we
have seen, was in the highest North. And because
they still occupied the heaven - touching mountain,
the rebellion by which they forfeited their estate of
blessedness is expressly described as "on the moun
tain,"1 — an object not easily found in Egypt.
The same teaching is further supported by the
language of certain scholars, who, without any par
ticular theory as to the location of Eden, have held
that the hieroglyph used in Egyptian texts as the
determinative prefix to names designating civilized
lands, £^, is simply a pictorial symbol of primitive
Eden divided by its fourfold river.2 A writer in
the Edinburgh Review, said to be Mr. Walter Wil-
kins, remarks : " The Buddhists and Brahmans, who
together constitute nearly half the population of the
world, tell us that the decussated figure of the cross,
whether in a simple or complex form, symbolizes
the traditional happy abode of their primeval ances
tors, — the Paradise of Eden toward the East, as we
find it expressed in the Hebrew. And, let us ask,
what better picture or more significant characters,
1 " Wahrend er, der Gott der das Sein selber ist, seines Konig-
thums waltete, da waren die Menschen und die Gotter zusammen
vereint." Brugsch, Die neiie Weltordmmg nach Vertilgung des siin-
digen Menschengeschlechts. Berlin, 1881 : p. 20. Naville, The De
struction of Mankind by Ra. Records of the Past, vol. vi., pp. 103 seq.
2 Sometimes this hieroglyph is accompanied by the character sig
nifying "God" or "divine." In such connection Brugsch renders it
" heilige Wohnstatte." On other renderings, however, see the Zeit-
schrift fur agyptische Sprache. 1880: p. 25. See also Ceramic Art in
Remote Ages ; with Essays on the Symbols of the Circle, the Cross and
Circle, the Circle and Ray Ornament, the Fylfot, and the Serpent, shoiu-
ing their relation to the primitive forms of Solar and Nattire Wor
ship. By John B. Waring. London, 1874: Plates 33-37.
180 PARADISE FOUND.
in the complicated alphabet of symbolism, could
have been selected for the purpose than a circle and
a cross ? — the one to denote a region of absolute
purity and perpetual felicity, the other those four
perennial streams that divided and watered the sev
eral quarters of it." 1 Mr. Wilkins claims that in
the Egyptian hieroglyph above given we have the
same symbol as in the Indian Swastika. It was
therefore primeval Paradise which was commemo
rated by "the sacred circular cakes of the Egyp
tians, composed of the richest materials, — of flour,
of honey, of milk, — and with which the serpent and
bull, as well as the other reptiles and beasts conse
crated to the service of Isis and their higher divin
ities, were daily fed, and which upon certain festi
vals were eaten with extraordinary ceremony by the
people and their priests." He continues, " ' The
cross-cake,' says Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, 'was their
hieroglyph for civilized land/ — obviously a land
superior to their own, as it was, indeed, to all mun
dane territories ; for it was that distant, traditional
country of sempiternal contentment and repose, of
exquisite delight arid serenity, where Nature, unas
sisted by man, produces all that is necessary for his
sustentation."
" This," says Donnelly, though arguing in favor of
a mid-Atlantic island-Eden, — " this was the Garden
of Eden of our race. ... In the midst of it was a
sacred and glorious eminence, — the umbilicus orbis
terrarum, — ' toward which the heathen in all parts
1 " The Pre-Christian Cross." Edinburgh Review, January, 1870,
p. 254. Zockler did not think the primitive character of this sym
bolism well established ( The Cross of Christ, p. 35) ; but the moment
Eden is identified with the " middle country " of the Pole the natu
ralness and primitiveness of the symbol become most easy of belief.
PARADISE IN EGYPTIAN THOUGHT. l8l
of the world, and in all ages, turned a wistful gaze
in every act of devotion, and to which they hoped
to be admitted, or rather to be restored, at the close
of this transitory scene.' " 1
In Part fifth, chapter fourth, it will be shown that
the umbilicus orbis terrarum is indisputably the ter
restrial pole.
Finally, if, as Plato represents, the story of lost
Atlantis was received from Egypt, and constituted a
part of the priestly teaching of the dwellers upon
the Nile, our next chapter will present us further
evidence that the Eden and the antediluvian world
of ancient Egyptian tradition were precisely where
the tradition of other ancient peoples placed them,
to wit, in the land of sacred memories in the far-off,
faerie North.
1 Donnelly, Atlantis, p. 322.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CRADLE OF THE RACE IN ANCIENT GREEK
THOUGHT.
In the Centre of the Sea is the White Isle of great Zeus,
There is Mount Ida, and our race's Cradle.
A. II that is beautiful and rare seems to come from the North. — HERODOTUS.
When transactions are of such antiquity it is not wonderful if the history should
Prove obscure. — PLUTARCH.
The -writings that narrate these fables, not being delivered as inventions of the
•writers, but as things before believed and received, appear like a soft whisper from
the traditions of more ancient nations, conveyed through the flutes of the Grecians.
— BACON.
RESPECTING the origin of men there were among
Greek writers, as Preller states, "very different opin
ions." Part of this diversity he ascribes to a dif
ference in the natural environment of the first in
habitants : some, residing in the woody hills, would
naturally think the first men came from these ;
others, inhabiting a valley, would more naturally
think of their ancestors as having come out of the
water. The Asiatic-Greek belief that the first of
the human race were made out of trees he calls
" quite peculiar." 1 What if it should be found that
all these notions were merely fragments of an old,
old faith, according to which man originated on the
mountain of all mountains, by the source of all wa
ters, and under the tree of all trees !
However this may be, it is certainly very interest-
1 Griechische Mythologie, i., pp. 56, 57.
PARADISE IN GREEK THOUGHT. 183
ing to note that in the Greek myth of Meropia, or
Meropis, Renan, Lenormant, and others recognize
the old Asiatic Meru. They hold that " the sacred
expression /xepoTre? wOpwiroi originally meant 'the men
sprung from Meru.' " l Stephanus has the same ren
dering in his " Thesaurus."
In an advance chapter of his " Origines de 1'His-
toire," Lenormant expressed himself on this point
as follows : " I have stated above, in agreement
with M. Renan, that the sacred expression /^oTres,
as used among the Greeks to designate mankind,
could not have originally been applied to them on
account of their possessing the gift of articulate
speech, as is pretended in the etymology of gram
marians of late date, but as having proceeded from
Meru. Such an explanation, the consequence of
which is to carry back this name of the sacred
mountain, the abode of the gods and the birth-place
of mankind, to the most ancient period of Aryan
unity, is corroborated, in a manner to my mind quite
decisive, by the existence of myths which make the
Meropes to be a special and autochthonic popula
tion, of a date far back in the most ancient times,
who lead a life of innocence and happiness, marked
by extraordinary longevity (a feature in common with
the Indian legends concerning Uttara-Kuru), under
the government of a king, Merops, who is sometimes
represented as preserving them from the Deluge in
the same way as the Yima of the Iranians, and as
sembling them around him to shelter them from the
Flood, from which they alone escape. This myth
is usually localized in the island of Kos, which re
ceives the name of Meropeis, Meropis, or Merope.
1 Lenormant, Origines, ii. i, p. 56.
1 84 PARADISE FOUND.
But the island of Siphnos is also reputed to have
been called Meropia in virtue of a similar tradition,
and Strabo speaks of a fabulous region of the name
of Meropis, which was described by Theopompus,
and which seems to have been placed near the coun
try of the Hyperboreans. Merops is also given as
a king of the Ethiopians ; the most pious and most
virtuous of men, the husband of Klymene the mother
of Phaethon, and consequently anterior to the catas
trophe of the conflagration of the universe, by which
the first human race, that of the Golden Age, is often
said to have been destroyed. Or else the same
name is given to a prophet king of Rhyndakos, in
Mysia, who also receives the very significant appel
lation of Makar, or Makareus, ' the happy.' All
this shows that the paradisaic myth of the Meropes
was not peculiar to the island of Kos, but was cur
rent elsewhere in the Greek world, and had under
gone more than one localization there." l
Plato's story of lost Atlantis, the island which
the ocean-god Poseidon prepared for his son Atlas
to rule over, is a fascinating picture of the ante
diluvian world. Whether originating in Egypt, as
claimed by Plato,2 or inherited as a part of the
legendary wealth of the Hellenes, it is of special
interest to us in the present discussion ; and this
for three reasons : —
1 "Ararat and Eden." The Contemporary Review, Sept., 1881, Am.
ed., p. 44. Compare Bryant, Analysis of Ancient Mythology. Lon
don, 1807 : vol. v., pp. 75-92. Also Samuel Beal : "It can hardly
be questioned that the Buddhist cosmic arrangement is allied with
Greek tradition as embodied in Homer." Buddhist Literature in
China. London, 1882 : p. xv.
2 " But, O Socrates, you can easily invent Egyptians or anything
else ! " — Phatdrus, 275 B.
PARADISE IN GREEK THOUGHT. 185
First, we have elsewhere shown that in oldest
Greek thought Atlas belongs at the North Pole, and
it is only reasonable to locate the kingdom of Atlas
in the same locality.
Secondly, some authorities have unconsciously
placed Atlantis in just this polar position by identi
fying its inhabitants with the " Hyperboreans." l
Thirdly, Apollodorus and Theopompus expressly
call the lost land Meropia, and its inhabitants Me-
ropes ; i. e., according to the above authorities, "is
sued from Meru." 2
The fabled country further resembles Eden in the
difficulties which scholarship of every kind has found
in giving it a location in harmony with all the data.
These difficulties are so great that some learned
writers have located it as far to the West as Amer
ica, others as far to the East as in the Sea of Azof,
or in Persia. Even of those who have sought a
place for it in the mid-Atlantic, some have pushed it
up and some down, until one of the latest writers
says, "All hypotheses are permissible." 3 His illus-
1 Liiken, Die Traditionen des Menschengeschlechtes, p. 73. Bryant,
Analysis of Ancient Mythology, vol. v., p. 157: "Pindar manifestly
makes them [the Hyperboreans] the same as the Atlantians."
2 " It was a common practice with the Greeks to disguise their
own ignorance of the purport of a foreign word by supplying a word
of a similar sound and inventing a story to agree with it : thus Meru,
or the North Pole, the supposed abode of the Devatas, being consid
ered as the birth-place of the god, gave rise to the fable that Bac-
chus's second birth was from the thigh of Jupiter, because Meros, a
Greek word approaching Meru in sound, signifies thigh in that lan
guage." — J. D. Paterson, " Origin of the Hindu Religion," in Asiatic
Researches. London, 1808 : vol. viii., p. 51.
3 Reference is had to M. le Marquis de Nadaillac, who, being him
self uncertain, says, " Que PAtlantide ait ete situee vers le Nord,
que ses limites aient ete recule'es vers le Sud, il est difficile de rien
preciser et tous les hypotheses sont permises." L'Amerique Prehis-
1 86 PARADISE FOUND.
trious countryman, Monsieur J. S. Bailly, a century
ago, came nearer the truth, when, in view of the
perplexities attending all other locations, he cor
rectly placed his lost Atlantis in the Paleo-Arctic
Ocean.
Again, the antediluvian world was, of course, in
the vicinity of lost Eden. But it is to be observed
that in Hellenic tradition Deukalion is not a Greek,
but an inhabitant of a country in the high North,
a Scythian. Moreover the Scythians, as we know
from Justin, were considered a very much more an
cient people than the Greeks ; indeed, as the very
oldest in the world.1 Moreover, Scythia, like polar
Meru and Hara-berezaiti, was conceived of as a lofty
region from which all the rivers of the earth de
scend.2 All of which obviously connects the ante-
torique. Paris, 1883 : p. 566. See Unger, Die versunkene Insel At
lantis. Vienna, 1860. Donnelly, Atlantis: the Antediluvian World.
New York, 1882. A " conjectural map " is given in Bory de Saint
Vincent, VHomme, Essai Zob'logique sur le genre httmain. The fJl-
tima Teoria sobre la Atldntida, by D. Pedro de Novo y Colson, ap
pended to the author's Viajes Apocrifos de Juan de Fuca, Madrid,
1881, pp. 191-223, has no independent value, being based on the
Studies of M. Gaffarel. An extended essay by E. F. Berlioux, is en
titled " Les Atlantes : Histoire de P Atlantis et de P Atlas primitif,"
appearing in the just issued Annuaire de la Faculte de Lyon. Paris,
1884, Premiere Annee, Fasc. i., pp. 1-170.
" Scytharum gentem semper habitam fuisse antiquissimam."
2 "The geographical indications of the great epic poem of the
Mahabharata represent Meru rather as a vast and highly elevated re
gion than as a distinct mountain, and make it supply all the rivers of
the world with water. This system is pretty much in conformity
with that which Justin has borrowed from Trogus Pompeius, and
according to which Scythia, the country of the most ancient of man
kind, without having, properly speaking, any mountains, is higher
than the rest of the earth in such a way as to be the starting-point of
all the rivers, editiorem omnibus terris esse, ut cuncta flumina ibi
nata" — Lenormant, The Contemporary Review^ Sept., 1881 (Am,
cd.), p. 40.
PARADISE IN GREEK THOUGHT. 187
diluvian Deukalion with the primitive country at the
Arctic summit of the globe.
Finally, in Greek tradition, the first men lived
under the beneficent rule of Kronos, father of Zeus,
enjoying the blessedness of the Golden Age. But
it is clear from Strabo and others that the seat of
Kronos' kingdom was in the farthest North.1 Men-
zel begins his chapter on " The Isles of Kronos " with
these words : " The oldest of the Greek gods, Kro
nos, we must conceive of as enthroned at the North
Pole." 2
We have now interrogated not only natural and
ethnological science, but also the history, the tradi
tions and myths of the eldest nations of the world.
Nowhere have we found our hypothesis inadmissible;
everywhere has it found remarkable confirmatory
evidence. The aggregate of this evidence coming
from such unexpected and entirely different sources
is very great. It is so convincing that an advocate
might well be content to leave the argument at this
point, — at least until some advocate of a different
location shall have made out a better case than any
one has yet done. Before leaving the subject, how
ever, we deem it wise to glance back to chapter sec-
1 Pherecydes describes Kronos as dwelling in that part of heaven
which is " nearest the earth," /'. <?., the northern. Strabo, vii., 143,
places him in " the home of Boreas" It agrees herewith that Sancho-
niathon, as preserved in the Greek version by Philo of Byblos, places
the seat of his power " in the middle of the lands," ... in " a place
near springs and rivers, where henceforth the worship of heaven was
established." Lenormant, Beginnings of History, p. 531. Compare
infra, Part fifth, chapters fourth and fifth : " The Navel of the
Earth," and " The Quadrifurcate River."
2 Unsterblichkeitslehre, i., p. 93.
1 88 PARADISE FOUND.
ond of Part second, and inquire whether the various
points there hypothetically set forth as of necessity
" marked and memorable features " of a north polar
Paradise, if such an one ever existed, are capable
of any not yet alleged confirmation from the fields
of history and science. The results of this inquiry
will appear in the Part next following.
PART FIFTH.
FURTHER VERIFICATIONS BASED UPON THE
PECULIARITIES OF A POLAR PARADISE.
CHAP.
I. THE EDEN STARS.
II. THE EDEN DAY.
III. THE EDEN ZENITH.
IV. THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH.
V. THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER.
VI. THE CENTRAL TREE.
VII. THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE.
VIII. REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT.
When the Sun the East forgets,
When the Star no longer sets,
When the sacred Rishis seven
Wheel all night in highest heaven,
When the sky-descending Sea
Waters but a single Tree,
When each Year is but a Day, —
What shall all these portents say ?
CHAPTER I.
THE EDEN STARS.
E vidi stelle
Non viste mai, for che alia prima gente.
DANTE.
WE have already reminded the reader that in an
Eden situated at the North Pole the stars, instead of
seeming to rise and set as with us, would have had
a horizontal motion from left to right round and
round the observer. This appearance of the heav
enly bodies could of course be found nowhere but at
the Pole. If, therefore, we could anywhere in the
world of ancient tradition find any statement of a
belief that at the beginning of the world the move
ments of the heavenly bodies were different from
their present movements, and particularly if we
should be able to find trace of a belief that the pri
meval motion of the stars was in orbits apparently
horizontal, this would certainly be a most striking
and cogent and unexpected evidence that human
observation of the starry heavens began at the Pole.
Now it so happens that we have traces of just
such a belief. In the tantalizing fragments of an
cient lore, preserved to us in the pages of Diogenes
Laertius, we find ascribed to the illustrious Greek
astronomer Anaxagoras this remarkable teaching :
"In the beginning the stars revolved in a tholiform
manner."
1 92 PARADISE FOUND.
Now to revolve in a tholiform manner is to re
volve in a horizontal plane, like the 0o'Aos, or " dome,"
of an astronomical observatory. Anaxagoras him
self denned the motion more fully when he said that
it was a motion, not vvro, underneath, but wept, around
the earth.1
Anaximenes would seem to have had the same
idea, for he is reported to have likened the primitive
revolution of the sky to the rotating of a man's hat
upon his head. Another explanatory expression
(whether originating with Anaxagoras or with his re
porter we do not know) is this: "At first the Pole
star, which is continually visible, always appeared in
the zenith, but afterward it acquired a certain decli
nation." 2
Here, then, we have as a doctrine of the ancient
astronomers the singular notion that, in the begin
ning of the world, the celestial Pole was in the ze-
1 See " Des ficrits et de la Doctrine d'Anaxagore " in Histoire de
I* Academic des Sciences et Bdles Lettres de Berlin. Berlin, 1755 : vol.
ix., pp. 378 ff.
2 Diogenes Laertius, ii., 9 : T& S'&ffTpa /car' apx&s juei/ floAoeiSws
evex^cu, #oTe Kara Kopu^V TTJS 77)5 r'bv aei $cuv6fAfVOV e?rat Tr6\ov,
vvrepov 5e r^v eyK\icriv Aa/Beti/. Letronne (Des Opinions Cosmogra~
phiques des Peres de F Eglise rapprochees des Doctrines Philosophiques
de la Grece) says that the opinion cannot have been limited to the
school of Anaximenes and Zenophanes. "Elle a du faire partie de
la doctrine physique de plusieurs des sects anciennes." Revue des
Deux Mondes. Paris, 1834 : p. 650. — In this connection it is well
worthy of note that in the Japanese cosmogony the predecessor or
" father," of our present sun and moon is represented as beginning
his activities in the new-created world by repeatedly performing in a
horizontal plane a circumambulation of the " Island of the Congealed
Drop ; " also that in Chinese tradition the first man held the primeval
sun and moon one in each hand. Our latest Chinese writer upon the
subject speaks of this as particularly noticeable. Revue des Deux
Mondes, May 14, June i, and June 14, 1884. A few passages are cited
in The Catholic World, December, 1884, pp. 320-323.
THE EDEN STARS. 193
nith, and that the revolutions of the stars were round
a perpendicular axis.1 What could have led an as
tronomer to invent such a doctrine it is impossible
to say. On the other hand, if it was one of the
interesting and seemingly paradoxical traditions of
the early postdiluvian world, it is perfectly easy to
see how imperishable a story it would be, particu
larly among the star-loving Chaldaeans and Babyloni
ans, from whom the earliest Greek astronomers and
scientists received no small share of their doctrines.2
And that the Chaldseans and probably the Egyp
tians had precisely this idea is not a notion here
advanced for the first time.3
Another interesting question now suggests itself.
When and under what circumstances was this al
leged "declination" of the Pole imagined to have
taken place ? Was it gradual, or sudden ? Did the
ancients suppose it to have resulted from a move
ment in the regular order of nature, or from one in
1 Since writing the above I have read Richard A. Proctor's " New
Theory of Achilles' Shield," and have been particularly struck with
his argument, from the position of the aquatic constellations in the
most ancient astronomy, that the celestial equator at the time of the
invention of the constellations must have been " in a horizontal posi
tion" Light Science for Leisure Hours. London, 1870: pp. 309-312.
2 The instructor of Thales was a Chaldasan, a fact which writers
on the early cosmological speculations of the Greeks have almost uni
formly overlooked. See also L. von Schroeder, Pythagoras und die
Inder. Leipsic, 1884.
3 " II est de meme vraisemblable que les Chaldeens ont eu 1'idee
d'une destruction et d'un renouvellement du monde, c'est-a-dire, de la
surface de notre globe, et conjointement avec cette destruction, d '««
deplacement des corps celestes du firmament. . . . Diverses inscriptions
dans les temples Egyptiens et des hieroglyphes . . . me paraissent
aussi etre des essais de representer distinctement la catastrophe
du deluge et le changement qui alors s'est operS dans fancien del" —
Klee, Le Deluge. Paris, 1847 : p. 307.
13
194 PARADISE FOUND.
violation thereof ? Was it to them a normal and
ever on-going change, or was it the record of a nat
ural catastrophe ?
Our hypothesis would lead us to expect the latter
of these suppositions.1 The only rational and cred
ible explanation of the declination is to be found in
a transfer of the theatre of human history from the
circumpolar home to some land of lower latitude.
Now if, during the prevalence of the Deluge, or
later, in consequence of the on-coming of the Ice
age, the survivors of the Flood were translocated
from their antediluvian home at the Pole to the
north slope of the " plateau of Pamir," the prob
able starting-point of historic postdiluvian human
ity, the new aspect presented by the heavens in this
new latitude would have been precisely as if in the
grand world-convulsion the sky itself had become
displaced, its polar dome tilted over about one third
of the distance from the zenith to the horizon.
The astronomical knowledge of those survivors very
likely enabled them to understand the true reason
of the changed appearance, but their rude descend
ants, unfavored with the treasures of antediluvian
science, and born only to a savage or nomadic life
in their new and inhospitable home, might easily
have forgotten the explanation. In time such chil
dren's children might easily have come to embody
the strange story handed down from their fathers
in strange myths, in which nothing of the original
facts remained beyond an obscure account of some
mysterious displacement of the sky, supposed to have
1 Bailly in his Histoire de VAstronomie des Anciens inclines to the
opinion that the ancient Egyptians thought the declination a gradual
one, but Klee expresses decided doubt. Le Deluge, p. 301.
THE EDEN STARS. 195
occurred in a far-off age in connection with some
appalling natural cataclysm or world-disaster.1
Now it is difficult to believe it a mere accident
that in various ancient authors we find allusion both
to an extremely ancient displacement of the sky and
to its supposed original state. None of these allu
sions have ever been explained by writers on the
subject. One of them occurs in Plato's Timaeus,
where, in language ascribed to an Egyptian priest of
Solon's time, " a declination of the bodies revolving
round the earth" is spoken of, and this declination is
offered as the true explanation of the partial destruc
tion of the world commemorated in the myth of
Phaethon. As this destruction was by fire there
would at first sight seem to be no connection be
tween it and the destruction at the time of the
Deluge ; nor is there in the context anything to sug
gest such a connection. Fortunately, however, we
have in Hyginus a fuller version of the myth, from
which it appears that the Greeks supposed Deukali-
on's universal flood to have been providentially sent
to extinguish the fearful conflagration which Phae-
thon's unskillful driving of the steeds of the sun had
1 The only other plausible explanation of the facts now under con
sideration would be that furnished by the long ago proposed but em
phatically rejected theory, that in some distant geological age in con
sequence of some cataclysm the axis of the earth's rotation was
changed, bringing the new or present Pole into a region before tem
perate or torrid. C. F. Winslow, M. D., in his pamphlet on The
Cooling Globe, Boston, 1865, was one of the most recent theorists to
favor this view. But see Maedler, Populdre Astronomie, p. 370 ss.,
who states that, according to the calculations of Bessel, the bodily
plucking up of one hundred and fourteen cubic miles of the Himalaya
mountains and the transfer of them to North America would change
the position of the earth's axis less than one hundred feet. Still
stronger statements are made in the paper read before the London
Geological Society, Feb. 21, 1877, by Professor J. F. Twisden.
196 PARADISE FOUND.
occasioned. This makes the connection clear and
direct. The Flood and the " declination of the
heavenly bodies revolving round the earth " are at
once brought into a true historic relation.1
In like manner, in the Bundahish, in the first five
chapters, and in Zad Sparam's paraphrase of the
same, it is stated that during the first three thousand
years, before the incoming of the Evil One, " the
sun, moon, and stars stood still," but as soon as the
Destroyer of the good creation came he assaulted
and deranged the sky, as well as the earth and sea.2
And remarkably enough, it is stated that as a result
of this assault the Evil One mastered as much as
" one third of the sky "and overspread it with dark
ness.3 Moreover, in the thirtieth chapter, in giv
ing a prophetic account of the final restoration of
the material world to its primeval state, there seems
to be an allusion in verse thirty-two to a necessary
resetting or readjustment of the celestial vault by
the hand of its Creator.4
To all such facts, wherever found, we have in the
hypothesis of an Arctic Eden and a transfer of the
human horizon at the time of the Deluge to lower
latitudes a perfect key.
1 Compare Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 648-690.
2 " The Aztecs said that when the sun had risen for the first time,
at the beginning, it lay on the horizon, and moved not.''' Dorman,
Primitive Superstitions. Phila., 1 88 1 : p. 330. Both of these reports
look as if they had sprung from misapprehension of the original tradi
tion given by Anaxagoras.
8 West, Pahlavi Texts. London, 1880 : Pt. 5., p. 17. West trans
lates uncertainly. Justi renders the passage, '•' Er nahm vom Inneren
des Himmels ein Drittheil ein." Der Bundahish. Leipsic, 1868 :
P-5-
4 West, Pahlavi Texts, Pt. i., p. 129. This last remark is based
upon West's version ; it is not supported by Windischmann's.
CHAPTER II.
THE EDEN DAY.
Such day
As heaven! s great year brings forth.
MILTON.
To the first men, if the Garden of Eden was lo
cated at the Pole, there could have been but one day
and one night in a year. Moreover, at the break of
that strange day the sun must have risen, not in
the East, as in postdiluvian times, but in the South.
Do the traditions or sacred books of the ancient
world afford any hint of such a sunrise and of such
an Eden day ?
A partial answer to this question is found in the
beliefs of the ancient Northmen. A learned Danish
writer pronounces it " remarkable " that the Scandi
navian mythology informs us that, before the estab
lishment of the present order of the world, the sun,
which now rises in the East, "rose in the South" 1
Equally striking confirmations appear in other
mythologies. Turning to the second Fargard of the
Avesta, we find the most ancient Iranian account of
Yima, the first man and "the King of the Golden
Age." A detailed account is also given of a certain
1 " Ce qu'il y a de plus remarquable dans la mythologie du Nord,
c'est qu'elle nous reconte qu'avant 1'ordre actual des choses (avant
que les fils de Bor, c'est-a-dire les dieux, eussent cree Midgard), le
soleil se levait au Sud, tandis qu'i present il se leve a 1'Est." — Fre-
derik Klee, Le Deluge, Fr. ed. Paris, 1847 : P- 224- /
198 PARADISE FOUND.
Vara, or inclosure, which as a safe habitation — a
kind of Garden of Eden — he was divinely com
manded to make. Then comes this singular ques
tion and answer : " O Maker of the material world,
thou Holy One ! What lights are there in the Vara
which Yima made ? "
"Ahura Mazda answered: There are uncreated
lights and created lights. There the stars, the
moon, and the sun are only once a year seen to rise
and set, and a year seems only as a day." 1 Haug's
version of the last clause is, " And they think that a
day which is a year." 2 Spiegel's is the same,3 al
though in his Commentary he confesses himself per
plexed as to the meaning of so remarkable a decla
ration. "The really genuine words," he observes,
" are very difficult." They are not so when once
the key is found.
That the East Aryans had the same idea is also
evident from the Laws of Manu. Among this peo
ple Yama — the same as the Iranian Yima — was
the first man. His first abode, as we have seen, was
at the North Pole, and at death he became a god,
the guardian of the South Pole, at which was the
region of the dead. But though the Hindus no
longer associated him with the North at the time of
the writing of this ancient book, they well under
stood that Yama's primitive Eden in Ilavrita, around
the north polar Meru, where the gods reside, has
only one day and one night in the year. This is the
language of the Code : " A year of mortals is a day
1 Darmesteter's Translation, vol. i., p. 20.
2 Haug's Essays on the Religion of the Par sis, 2d ed., p. 235.
3 " Diese (die Bewohner) halten fur einen Tag was ein Jahr ist."
Spiegel, Avesta. Leipsic, 1852 : vol. i., p. 77. See also his Commen*
tar ilber das Avesta. Wien, 1864 : vol. i., pp. 78, 79.
THE EDEN DAY. 199
and a night of the gods, or regents of the universe
seated around the North Pole ; and again their divis
ion is this : their day is the northern and their night
the southern course of the sun." 1
In like manner, in the Surya Siddhanta we read,
" The gods behold the sun, after it is once arisen,
for half a year." 2
Equally unmistakable is the language of the prob
ably more ancient work, lately translated under the
title of " The Institutes of Vishnu : " -
" The northern progress of the sun is a day with
the gods.
" The southern progress of the sun is (with them)
a night.
" A year is (with them) a day and a night." 3
1 Code of Manual. 67.
2 Chapter xii., 74.
3 The Institutes of Vishnu, translated by Julius Jolly. Ch. xx., I,
2, 3. Sacred Books of the East, vol. vii., p. 77. I cannot help think
ing that in these alternate approaches and recessions of the sun we
have the true explanation of the origin of the old Rabbinical idea of
half-yearly cold and heat in hell, this latter being located, as we have
shown, at the South Pole : " The great Jalkut Rubeni gives us the
following account of hell : Sheol is half fire and half hail, and
therein are many rivers of fire. The seven abodes (or divisions) of
hell are very spacious ; and in each there are seven rivers of fire
and seven rivers of hail. The uppermost abode is sixty times less
than the second, and thus the second is sixty times larger than the
first, and every abode is sixty times larger than that which precedes
it. In each abode are seven thousand caverns, and in each cavern
seven thousand clefts, and in each cleft seven thousand scorpions ;
and each scorpion hath seven limbs, and on each limb are one thou
sand barrels of gall. There are likewise seven rivers of rankest
poison, which when a man toucheth he bursteth ; and the destroying
angels judge him and scourge him every moment, half a year in the
fire and half a year in the hail and snow. And the cold is more in
tolerable than the fire." Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol.
:i., p. 345 (English translation, vol. ii., p. 52). According to the Sur
ya Siddanta, the demons as well as the gods behold the sun for six
months at a time.
2OO PARADISE FOUND.
This strange notion is perfectly clear and compre
hensible the moment we assume that the long-lived
fathers and first regents of the human race originally
dwelt at the North Pole, and that these, apotheosized
and glorified in the imagination of later generations,
in time became the gods which ancient nations wor
shiped.
Both in the Iliad and Odyssey the learned Anton
Krichenbauer finds two kinds of days continually re
ferred to. In what he considers the more ancient
portions of the poems, the day is a period of one
year's duration, especially when used in describing
the life and exploits of the gods ; in what he con
siders the more modern portions, the term has its
modern meaning as a period of twenty-four hours.
He quotes Lepsius as recognizing a similar "one-
day year" in the Egyptian and other ancient chro
nologies ; also the mention made of it by Palaifatos
and Suidas.1
In all such hitherto unnoticed testimonies — and
we have not exhausted the list of them 2 — we have
new and singularly unimpeachable evidences that in
the thought of these ancient peoples the land in
which the generated gods and men alike originated
was a land in which, as in our Polar Eden, a day and
a night filled out the year. And if such was their
1 Beitrdge zur homerischen Uranographie. Wien, 1874 : pp. 1-34.
Comp. p. 68.
2 Even the Bushmen of South Africa have the strange idea that
the sun did not shine on their country in the beginning. Only after
the children of the first Bushmen had been sent up to the [North
ern ?] top of the world and had launched the sun was light procured
for this [subterranean] South African region. Bushman Folk-lore,
By W. H. J. Bleek, Ph. D., Parliament Report. Capetown and Lon-
don, 1875 : p. 9. A similar myth was found among the Australian
aborigines.
THE EDEN DAY. 2OI
idea, whence, save from actual tradition, could they
have derived it ? As cautious a scientific authority
as Sir Charles Lyell, speaking of these cosmological
and chronological traditions of the Hindus, says :
" We can by no means look upon them as a pure
effort of the unassisted imagination, or believe them
to have been composed without regard to opinions
and theories founded on the observation of Nature!' 1
Even where the tradition has become distorted or
inverted among barbarians, the parallelism of the
year and the day is not always lost. A curious in
stance of this has come under the notice of the
writer since the present chapter was begun : " In
those days (in the world before the present) the sea
sons were much shorter than they are now. A year
then was but as a day of our time." 2
1 Elements of Geology, nth ed., vol. i., p. 8.
2 W. Matthews, " The Navajo Mythology," in The American An
tiquarian and Oriental Journal. Chicago, July, 1883 : p. 209. Com
pare the expression given by Garcia as from the Mixteque cosmog
ony, in P. Dabry de Thiersant, Origins des Indiens du Nouveau-
Monde. Paris, 1883 : p. 140 n. 2.
CHAPTER III.
THE EDEN ZENITH.
. . . The shrine -where motion first began?-
A nd light and life in mingling torrent ran,
From whence each bright rotundity -was hurled,
The Throne of God, — the Centre of the World.
CAMPBELL'S Pleasures of Hope.
EL walketh in the CHUG of heaven. — Book of Job.
To the first men, on the hypothesis of an Arctic
Eden, the zenith and the north pole of the heavens
were identical. Such an aspect of the starry vault
the humanity of our late historic ages has never
seen. Under such an adjustment of the rotating
firmament, how regular and orderly would nature
appear ! What profound significance would of ne
cessity attach to that mysterious unmoving centre-
point of cosmic revolution directly overhead ! As
intimated on page 50, that polar centre must nat
urally have seemed to be the top of the world, the
true heaven, the changeless seat of the supreme God
or gods. " And if, through all the long life-time of
the antediluvian world, this circumpolar sky was
thus to human thought the true abode of God, the
1 The poet is speaking of the North Pole. The first three lines
are illustrated by the closing chapters of Part third, above ; the last
sums up the facts to be set forth in the present chapter. A word from
Menzel is here in place : " Nysa wird in vielen griechischen Mythen
als im Central punkt bezeichnet von wo das Weltleben ausging und
wohin es zuriickkehrt. . . . Das ideale Nysa kb'nnen wir nirgend
anders als im Ausgangspunkte des Welt, im Nordpol suchen." Die
vorchristliche Unsterblichkeitslehre, i. 65 ; also p. 42.
THE EDEN ZENITH. 20$
oldest postdiluvian peoples, though scattered down
the sides of the globe half or two thirds the distance
to the equator, could not easily forget that at the
centre and true top of the firmament was the throne
and the palace of its great Creator."
The religions of all ancient nations signally con
firm and satisfy this antecedent expectation. With
a marvelous unanimity they associate the abode of the
supreme God with the North Pole, " the centre of
heaven'' or with the celestial space immediately sur
rounding it. No writer on Comparative Theology
has ever brought out the facts which establish this
assertion, but the following outline of them will
suffice for our present purpose : —
First. The Hebrew Conception. — In so pure and
lofty a monotheism as that of the ancient Hebrews,
we must not expect to find any such strict localiza
tion of the supreme God in the circumpolar sky as
we shall find among polytheistic peoples. " Do I
not fill heaven and earth ? " is the language of Jeho
vah. Nevertheless, as the Hebrews must be sup
posed to have shared, in some measure, the geo
graphical and cosmological ideas of their age, it
would not be strange if in their sacred writings traces
of these ideas were here and there discernible.
Some of these traces are quite curious, and they
have attracted the attention of not a few Biblical
scholars, to whom their origin and rationale are en
tirely unsuspected. Thus a learned writer on He
brew geography, after blindly repeating the common
assumption that "the Hebrews conceived the sur
face of the earth to be an immense disk, supported,
like the flat roof of an Eastern house, by pillars,"
yet uses such language as this : " The North ap-
2O4 PARADISE FOUND.
pears to have been regarded as the highest part of
the earth's surface, in consequence, perhaps, of the
mountain ranges which existed there." 1
Another, touching upon the same subject, says,
" The Hebrews regarded what lay to the North as
higher, and what lay to the South as lower: hence
they who traveled from South to North were said
to ' go up/ while they who went from North to South
were said to ' go down.' " 2
In Psalm seventy-fifth, verse sixth, we read, " Pro
motion cometh not from the East, nor from the West,
nor from the South." Why this singular enumera
tion of three of the points of the compass, and this
omission of the fourth? Simply because heaven,
the proper abode of the supreme God, being con
ceived of by all the surrounding nations, if not by
the Hebrews themselves, as in the North, in the cir-
cumpolar sky, that was the sacred quarter, and it
could not reverently be said that promotion cometh
not from the North.3 It would have been as offen
sive as among us to say that promotion cometh not
from above. Therefore, having completed his neg
ative statements, the Psalmist immediately adds,
"But God is the judge; He putteth down one, and
setteth up another."
A curious trace of the same conception appears
in the book of Job, in the eighth and ninth verses
1 Rev. William Latham Bevan, A. M., in Smith's Dictionary of the
Bible, Art. " Earth," vol. i., p. 633, 634 (Hackett's ed.). McClintock
and Strong's Cyclopedia, Art. " Geography," vol. iii., p. 792.
2 McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, Art. " North," vol. vii., p.
185. The Akkadians had the same idiom. Lenormant, Beginnings
of History, p. 313.
8 " A peculiar sanctity is attached to the North in the Old Testa
ment records." T. K. Cheyne, The Book of Isaiah. London, 1870:
pp. 140, 141. [See our cut : " The Earth of the Hindus," p. 152.]
THE EDEN ZENITH. 2O5
of the twenty -third chapter. In Old Testament
times, the Hebrews and the Arabians designated
the cardinal points by the personal terms, " before "
for East, "behind" for West, "left/hand " for North,
and " right hand " for South. Thus Job, in the pas
sage indicated, is complaining that he can nowhere,
East or West, North or South, find his divine judge.1
But, in speaking of one of these points, he adds this
singular qualification, "where God doth work" This
is said of the left hand, or North. It seems to be
inserted to render peculiarly emphatic the declara
tion, "I go . . . [even] to the left hand where He doth
work, but I cannot behold Him." If at first blush
such an apparent localizing of the divine agency
seems inconsistent with Job's splendid descriptions
of God's omnipresence in other passages, it should
be remembered that we, too, speak of the omni
present deity as dwelling " on high," and address
Him as " Our Father which art in Heaven."
A natural counterpart to this idea of a northern
heaven would be a belief or impression that spiritual
perils and evils were in a peculiar degree or manner
to be apprehended from the right hand, or South,
as the proper abode of demons, — the quarter to
which Asmodeus fled when exorcised by the angel.2
We cannot positively affirm that such a belief con-
1 Adam Clarke, Commentary, in loc. The best explanation the
oldest commentators know how to give is this : There were more hu
man beings and more intelligent ones North of Job's country than in
either of the three other cardinal directions ; especially was the North
the seat of the great Assyrian empire ; but God desires to reside and
to work preeminently among men, hence the language of the text !
Matthew Poole, in Dietelmair and Baumgarten's Bibeliverk, vol. v.,
p. 634.
2 Tobit, viii. 3. Compare The Book of Enoch, xviii. 6-16; xxi.
3-10.
206 PARADISE FOUND.
sciously prevailed among the ancient Hebrews, but,
holding the possibility in mind, we find passages
of Scripture which seem to stand out in a new and
striking light. Thus, in case there was such a be
lief, how great the force and beauty of the expres
sion, " Because [the Lord] is at my right hand [the
side exposed to danger] I shall not be moved." 1
With this may be compared the confident expres
sions of the one hundred and twenty-first Psalm :
" The Lord is thy keeper : the Lord is thy shade upon
thy right hand." So also in the ninety-first it is on
the right hand that destruction is anticipated : " A
thousand shall fall at thy side, and [or even] ten
thousand at thy right hand ; but it shall not come
nigh thee." Again, in the one hundred and forty-
second it is said, " I looked on my right hand, but
there was no man that would know me : refuge failed
me; no man cared for my soul." Notice also the
imprecation, " Let Satan stand at his right hand "
(Ps. cix. 6), and the vision of Zechariah, where the
great adversary makes his appearance on the right
of the one whom he came to resist (Zech. iii. i).
But as Satan here reveals himself from beneath
and from the South, so to Ezekiel the true God re
veals himself from above and from the North (Eze.
i. 4). In that quarter was God's holy mountain (Is.
xiv. 13), the city of the Great King (Ps. xlviii. 2),
the land of gold (Job xxxvii. 22, marg.), the place
where divine power had hung the earth upon noth
ing (Job xxvi. ;).2 Hence the priest officiating at
1 Ps. xvi. 8. The reference seems all the more unmistakable
since the next two verses speak of Sheol, or Hades.
2 " Im Norden sind die hochsten Berge, vor alien der heilige Got-
terberg Is. 14, 13. ... Vom Norden her kommt in der Regel Jeho-
THE EDEN ZENITH. 2O/
the altar, both in the tabernacle and later in the
temple, faced the North. According to the Talmud,
King David had an yEolian harp in the North win
dow of his royal bed-chamber, by means of which
the North wind woke him every night at midnight
for prayer and pious meditations.1 Probably it is
not without significance that in Ezekiel's vision of
the ideal temple of the future the chamber prepared
for the priests in charge of the altar was one
"whose prospect was toward the North." 2 (Eze.
xl. 46.)
vah." Herzog's Real-Encyklopddie, Art. " Welt," Bd. xvii., S. 678.
" Like the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, and Teutons, . . . the She-
mitic tribes spoke of a mountain of their gods in the far North (Is.
xiv. 13 ; Eze. xxviii. 14) ; and even with the Jews, notwithstanding
the counteracting influence of the Mosaic creed, traces of such a pop
ular belief continued to be visible (Ps. xlviii.), the North being, e. g.,
regarded as the sacred quarter (Lev. i. n; Eze. i. 4)." Dillmann,
in Schenkefs Bibel Lexicon. Leipsic, 1879 : v°l- "•> P- 49-
1 " Daily from the four quarters of the world blow the four Winds,
of which three are continually attended by the North wind ; otherwise
the world would cease to be. The most pernicious of all is the
South wind, which would destroy the world were it not held back by
the angel Bennetz." Quoted from the Talmud by Bergel, Studien
iiber die naturwissenschaftlichen Kenntnisse der Talmudisten. Leip
sic, 1880 : p. 84. Compare Dillmann, Das Buck Henoch, Kap.
Ixxvi. ; Ixxvii. ; xxv. 5 ; xxxiv. ; xxxvi, W. Menzel, Die vorchrist-
liche Unsterblichkeitslehre, Bd. ii., p. 35, 101, 168,345. See also p. 177
of this volume.
2 At first view it seems strange that in the Middle Ages, in Chris
tian Europe, the North should have come to be regarded as the special
abode of Satan and his subjects, and that on the north side of some
churches, near the baptismal font, there should have been a " Devil's
Door," which was opened to let the evil spirit pass to his own place
at the time of the renunciation of him by the person baptized. The
simple explanation of this is found in the fact that the people were
taught that their old gods, whom they had worshiped when pagans,
were devils. Compare Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 30,31. Con-
way, in his Demonology and Devil Lore (London, 1879 : vol. ii., 115 ;
i., 87), entirely misconceives the philosophy of the fact. A similar
change seems to have occurred among the Iranians after Mazdeism
2O8 PARADISE FOUND.
Second. The Egyptian Conception. — The corre
spondence of the ancient Egyptian conception of
the world and of heaven with the foregoing would
be remarkable did we not know that Egypt was
the cradle of the Hebrew people. The ancient in
habitants of the Nile valley had the same idea as to
the direction of the true summit of the earth. To
them, as to the Hebrews, it was in the North. This
was the more remarkable since it was exactly con
trary to all the natural indications of their own
country, which continually ascended toward the
South. As stated in a previous chapter, Brugsch
says, " The Egyptians conceived of the earth as ris
ing toward the North, so that in its northernmost
point it at last joined the sky!' * In correspondence
herewith the Egyptians located their Ta-nuter, or
" land of the gods," in the extreme North.2 On this
account it is on the northern exterior wall of the
great temple of Ammon at Karnac that the divinity
promises to King Rameses II. the products of that
heavenly country, " silver, gold, lapis-lazuli, and all
the varieties of precious stones of the land of the
gods." Hence, also, contrary to all natural indica
tions, the northern hemisphere was considered the
realm of light, the southern the realm of darkness.3
had transformed their ancient Daevas from gods to demons. Hence,
while in portions of the Avestan literature (generally the older) the
heaven of Ahura Mazda is in the North, in other portions the North
is the world of death and demons. See Bleek's Avesta, i., pp. 3, 137,
143 ; ii. 30, 31 ; iii. 137, 138, et passim. Darmesteter, Introduction,
p. Ixvii., Ixxx. Haug, Religion of the Parsis, pp. 267 ff.
1 Geographische Inschriften altagyptischer Denkmdler. Leipsic,
1858 : vol.ii., p. 37.
2 In one place Brugsch translates ta-nutar-t mahti " das nb'rdliche
Gottesland." Astronomische und astrologische Inschriften, p. 176.
3 " To the twelve great gods of heaven are immediately subjected
THE EDEN ZENITH.
The passage out of the secret chambers of the Great
Pyramid was pointed precisely at the North Pole
of the heavens. All the other pyramids had their
openings only on the northern side. That this ar
rangement had some religious significance few stu
dents of the subject have ever doubted. If our in
terpretation is correct, such passages from the burial
chamber toward the polar heaven intimated a vital
faith that from the chamber of death to the highest
abode of life, imperishable and divine, the road is
straight and ever open.1
Third. The Conception of the Akkadians, Assyri
ans, Babylonians, Indians, and Iranians. — After
what has been said in former chapters respecting
the location of Kharsak Kurra, Sad Matati, Har-
Moed, Su-Meru, and Hara-berezaiti, no further proof
is needed that all the peoples above named associ
ated the true heaven, the abode of the highest gods,
the stars dispersed in infinite number through all the ethereal space,
and divided into four principal groups according to the four quarters
of the world. They were then divided into two orders more elevated,
the one filling the northern hemisphere and belonging to light, to the
good principle, the other to the southern hemisphere, dark, co\d,fu-
neste, and to the sombre abodes of Amenti." Guigniaut's Creuzer,
Religions de F Antiquite, vol. ii., p. 836. A very curious survival of the
above conception is found in the Talmudic Emek Hammeleck. See
Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, Stehelin's version, vol. i., p.
181 ; comp. p. 255 ff.
1 The association of Set with the constellation of the Great Bear,
reported by Plutarch and lately confirmed by original astronomical
texts (Brugsch, Astronomische Inschriften alttrgyptiscker Denkmaler,
Leipsic, 1883, pp. 82-84, I2I-I23)> seems at first view inconsistent
with the south polar location of demons and destructive divinities.
But the apparent difficulty is transformed into an all the stronger
proof of the correctness of our theory when it is remembered that in
the most ancient times Set " was not a god of evil," but the supreme
world-sovereign from whom the Egyptian kings derived their author
ity over the two hemispheres. " It was not till the decline of the Em-
14
2IO PARADISE FOUND.
with the northern celestial pole.1 In each case the
apex of their respective mounts of the gods pierced
the sky precisely at that point. To this day the
Haranite Sabaeans — the most direct heirs of the
religious traditions of the Tigro-Euphratean world
— construct their temples with careful reference to
the ancient faith.2 Their priests also, in the act
of sacrifice, like all ancient priesthoods, face the
North.3
In the Rig Veda, ii., 40, I, we read of the amf-
tasya n fib him, "the Navel of the Heavens." The
same or similar expressions occur again and again
in the Vedic literature. They refer to the northern
celestial Pole, just as the expression ndbhir prthivyds,
" Navel of the Earth," R. V. iii., 29, 4, and elsewhere,
signifies the northern terrestrial Pole. To each is
ascribed preeminent sanctity. The one is the holi-
pire that this deity came to be regarded as an evil demon, that his
name was effaced from the monuments, and other names substituted
for his in the Ritual." Renouf, Religion of Ancient Egypt, pp. 119, 120.
The expression navel or centre of heaven, as a designation for the
northern celestial Pole, so common among ancient nations, would
seem to have been current among the Egyptians also. Brugsch,
Ibid., p. 122, 123. In the text as translated, however, there is some,
obscurity. Compare p. 154.
1 " There can be no doubt that ' the Heaven of Anu ' was the par
ticular limited celestial region, centring in the Pole star and pene
trated by the summit of the Paradisaical Mount." — Rev. O. D. Mil
ler, The Oriental and Biblical Journal. Chicago, 1880: p. 173.
2 " L'eglise n'a que deux fenetres et une porte qui est toujours
ouverte du oote du sud, afin que celui qui y entre ait 1'etoile polaire
devant lui." — N. Siouffi, Etudes sur la Religion des Soubbas oit Sa-
beens, les Dogmes, leur Mceurs. Paris, 1880 : p. 118.
3 " Cette position de la victime permet au sacrificateur, qui a le
morgno appuye sur 1'epaule gauche, de se placer, pour remplir son
role, de fa9on qu'il ait la figure tournee vers 1'etoile polaire qui couvre
Avather, tout en ayant en meme temps la tete de 1'animal a sa droite."
— Ibid., p. 112.
THE EDEN ZENITH. 2 1 1
est shrine in heaven, the other the holiest shrine on
earth. That no translator has hitherto caught the
true meaning of the terms seems unaccountable.1
In Buddhism, the heir and conservator of so many
of the ancient ideas of India, the same notion of a
world ruler with his throne at the celestial Pole
lived on.2 Very curiously, if we follow the author
ity of the Lalitavistara, the first actions and words
ascribed to the infant Buddha on his arrival in our
world unmistakably identify the North with the
abode of the gods, and its nadir with the abode of
the demons.3 Even the modern relics of the non-
Aryan aboriginal tribes of India, as for example the
Gonds, have retained this ancient ecumenical ethnic
belief.4
1 In his heading to Hymn I., 185, 5, Grassman parenthetically con
jectures that the Navel of the World therein spoken of may be " im
Osten" but suggests no reason for its location in that or any other
quarter. Not by accident, however, did the ancient bard elsewhere
(X., 82, 2) place the abode of God "beyond the Seven Rishis," in the
highest North.
2 " The omnipotence of Amitabha is dwelt on in some fine gdthds.
In the centre of heaven he sits on the lotus throne and guides the des
tinies of mortals.'" Arthur Lillie, Buddha and Early Buddhism.
London, 1882 : p. 128. Compare also p. 7 : "This Pole-star (Alpha
Draconis] was believed to be the pivot round which the cosmos re
volved. . . . The symbol of God and the situation of Paradise got to
be associated with this star."
8 "Le Lalitavistara, 97, rapporte ces paroles d'une maniere un peu
differente : ' Je suis le plus glorieux dans ce monde, etc.' Ensuite,
apres avoir fait sept pas dans la direction du septentrion : ' Je serai
le plus grand de tous les etres,' puis apres sept pas dans la direction
du nadir : ' Je detruirai le Malin et les mauvais esprits, je publierai
la loi supreme qui doit eteindre le feu de 1'Enfer au profit de tous les
habitants du monde souterrain.' " Note to Professor Kern's Histoire
du Bouddhisme dans f Inde. Revue de V Histoire des Religions. Paris :
torn, v., nro. i, p. 54. Compare the less explicit account in Beal's
Romantic History of Buddha, p. 44.
* " In burying they lay the head to the South and the feet to the
212 PARADISE FOUND.
Fourth. The Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan, and
Roman Conception. — That the Phoenicians shared
the general Asiatic view of a mountain of the gods
in the extreme North appears from Movers' learned
work upon that people.1
The evidence that in ancient Hellenic thought,
also, the heaven of the gods was in the northern
sky is incidental, but cumulative and satisfactory.
For example, heaven is upheld by Atlas, but the ter
restrial station of Atlas, as we have elsewhere shown,
is at the North Pole. Again, Olympos was the
abode of the gods ; but if the now generally current
etymology of this term is correct, Olympos was sim
ply the Atlantean pillar, pictured as a lofty moun
tain, and supporting the sky at its northern Pole.2
In fact, many writers now affirm that the Olympos
of Greek mythology was originally simply the north
polar " World-mountain " of the Asiatic nations.3
North, as the home of their gods is supposed to be in the latter direction.
They call the North Deoguhr sometimes, and the South, Muraho, is
looked upon as a region of terror ; so the feet are laid towards Deo
guhr in order that they may carry the dead man in the right direc
tion." — Report of Ethnological Committee, quoted in Spencer's De
scriptive Sociology, Div. I., Ft. 3, A., p. 36.
1 Die Phb'nizier. Bonn, 1841-56, vol. i., pp. 261, 414.
2 " Here the idea is that the gods reside above this mountain [Su-
Meru], which is, as it were, the support of their dwellings. This
brings to our mind the fable of Atlas supporting the heavens ; the
same idea may probably be traced in the Greek Olympos (Sanskrit,
dlamba, a ' support ')." Samuel Beal, Four Lectures on Buddhist Lit
erature in China. London, 1882 : p. 147. Compare Grill.
3 Compare A. H. Sayce, Transactions of Society Bib. Archeology,
vol. iii., 152. — Even in the mathematical cosmos of Philolaos, though
the sedes deorum seems to be placed in Hestia, at the centre of the
system, there is yet a steep way leading perpendicularly to the polar
summit of the heavens, by means of which the gods and holy souls
attain the diviner realm of all perfection : " Dii vero, quando ad con-
vivium pergunt, turn quidem acclivi via proficiscuntur sub summura
THE EDEN ZENITH. 213
In prayer the Greeks turned towards the North,
and from Homer we know that when they addressed
the " Olympian " gods they stretched out their hands
" toward the starry heavens ; " Greek prayers, there
fore, must have been addressed toward the northern
heavens. Entirely confirmatory of this is the ac
count Plato gives of " the holy habitation of Zeus,"
in which the solemn convocations of the gods were
held, and which, he explains, " was placed in the
Centre of the World." l
That this Centre is the northern celestial Pole is
placed beyond question by a well-known passage
from Servius Maurus,2 where it is called the " domi-
cilium Jovis" and where we are informed that the
Etruscan and Roman augurs considered thunder and
lightning in the northern sky more significant than
in any other quarter, being " higher and nearer to
the abode of Jove? 3 Countries in high northern
latitudes shared in this peculiar sanctity. " Toward
qui sub coelo est fornicem (arJoSa), et immortales quae dicuntur animae,
quando ad summum pervenerunt, extra progresses in coeli dorso con-
sistunt, circumlataeque cum iis animabus, quae comitari eas potuerunt,
loca supra coelum spectant, ubi pura et absoluta veritas, cognitio vir
tus, pulchritude, atque omnis omnino perfectio patet." Aug. Boeckh,
" De vera indole astronomiae Philolaicas." Gesammelte Kleine Schrif-
ten. Leipsic, 1866 : vol. iii., p. 288. Compare pp. 290-292.
1 Critias, 120. 2 j£ncid^ jj. £93.
3 " Et ideo ex ipsa parte significantiora esse fulmina, quoniam altiora
et viciniora domicilio Jovis" Compare Regell, " Das Schautempel der
Augurn" in the Neite Jahrbiicher der Philologie, Bd. cxxiii., pp. 593-
637. " The Hawaiian soothsayer, or kilo-kilo, turned always to the
North when observing the heavens for signs or omens, or when re
garding the flight of birds for similar purposes. The ancient Hindus
turned also to the North for divining purposes, and so did the Ira
nians before the schism, after which they placed the devs in the
North ; so did the Greek, and so did the Scandinavians before their
conversion to Christianity." A. Fornander, The Polynesian Race.
London, 1878 : vol. i., p. 240.
214 PARADISE FOUND.
the end of the official or state paganism," says M.
Beauvois, " the Romans regarded Great Britain as
nearer heaven and more sacred than the Mediterra
nean countries." l Varro and other Latin writers
confirm this general representation, so that all mod
ern expounders of the old Etruscan religion unite
in locating the abode of the gods of Etruria in the
Centre of Heaven, the northern circumpolar sky.2
Niebuhr and other authorities of the highest rank
assure us that the Romans shared the same faith.3
1 " Sacratiora sunt profecto Mediterraneis loca vicina ccelo" Beau
vois, in Revue de VHistoire des Religions. Paris, 1883 : p. 283. The
statement is based upon expressions in the official panegyric of the
Emperor Constantine Augustus. Compare the following : " Diodo-
rus Siculus speaks of a nation whom he calls the Hyperboreans, who
had a tradition that their country is nearest to the moon, on which
they discovered mountains like those on the earth, and that Apollo
comes there once every nineteen years. This period, being that of the
metonic cycle of the moon, shows that if this could have been really
discovered by them they must have had a long acquaintance with
astronomy.'' Flammarion, Astronomical Myths. London : p. 88.
2 " Im Nordpunkte der Welt." K. O. Miiller, Die Etrusker. Bres-
lau, 1828 : Bd. ii., pp. 126, 129. " Suivant eux, ceux-ci devaient habi-
ter dans la partie septentrionale du ciel, £ raison de son immobilite.
C'est de la region polaire qu'ils veillaient sur toute la terre." A.
Maury, in Religions de VAntiquite, Creuzer et Guigniaut, torn, ii., p.
1217. " La theologie etrusque, accueillant une doctrine que nous
avons deja recontree a 1'etat de reve confus dans la theologie grecque,
pla9ait a Textreme nord le sejour des ^Lsars ou dieux. Mais, tandis
que 1'Hellene se tourne vers les dieux pour les interroger, le Toscan
imite leur attitude supposee, afin de voir 1'espace comme ils le voient
eux-memes. Ayant done le visage tourne vers le midi, il appelle
antica la moitie meridionale du ciel," etc. A. Bouche-Leclercq, La
Divination chez les Etrusques. Revue de VHistoire des Religions.
Paris, 1881 : torn, iii., p. 326.
3 " Der Wohnsitz der Gotter ward im Norden der Erde geglaubt."
Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte, vol. ii., Anhang, p. 702. " It is well
known that the Romans placed the seat of the gods in the extreme
North." The Oriental Journal. Chicago, 1880 : vol. i., p. 143. Nie-
buhr's remark, " Der Augur dachte sich schauend wie die Gotter auf
die Erde schauen," explains the somewhat unqualified and mislead-
THE EDEN ZENITH. 21 5
Fifth. The Japanese Conception. — We have al
ready seen that in the Japanese cosmogony the
down-thrust spear of Izanagi becomes the upright
axis of heaven and earth. Izanagi's place, there
fore, at the upper end of this axis can be nowhere
else than at the North Pole of the sky.1
But we are not left to inference. So inseparably
was the Creator associated with the Pole in ancient
Japanese thought that one of his loftiest and divin-
est titles was derived from this association. Writ
ing of the primitive ideas of this people, one of our
best authorities uses the following language : " I
shall do the Ko-ji-ki, and the Shinto religion, and
the Japanese philosophy, strict justice by saying
that, according to them, there existed in the begin
ning one god, and nobody and nothing besides.
" ' Far in the deep infinitudes of space,
Upon a throne of silence,'
sat the god Ame-no-mi-naka-nushi-no-kami, whose
name signifies THE LORD OF THE CENTRE OF
HEAVEN." 2
What this Centre of Heaven is cannot well be
doubtful to any careful reader of the present chapter.
Sixth. The Chinese Conception. — The oldest
traceable worship among the Chinese is that of
Shang-te, the highest of all gods. It is believed to
have existed more than two thousand years before
Christ. Shang-te is usually and correctly described
ing statement of Professor Kuntze touching the rotary posture of
the Roman in prayer. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Roms. Oraculum,
Auspicium Templum, Regnum. Leipsic, 1882 : p. 15.
1 See above, pt. iv., ch. 2.
2 Sir Edward J. Reed, Japan, vol. i., p. 27. Compare Leon de
Rosny, in Revue de PHistoire des Religions. Paris 1884 : p. 208 ;
also p. 211.
2l6 PARADISE FOUND.
as the god of heaven. But his proper place of
abode, his palace, is called Tsze-wei. And if we in
quire as to the meaning and location of Tsze-wei,
the native commentators upon the sacred books in
form us that it is " a celestial space about the North
Pole." i
Here, as in Japan, and in Egypt, and in India, and
in Iran, and in Greece, the Pole is " the centre " of
the sky. A writer in the " Chinese Repository "
quotes from authoritative religious books these dec
larations: "The Polar star is the Centre of Heaven."
" Shang-te's throne is in Tsze-wei, i. e., the Polar
star." " Immediately over the central peak of
Kwen-lun appears the Polar star, which is Shang-
te's heavenly abode." "In the central place the
Polar star of Heaven, the one Bright One, the
Great Monad, always dwells." 2
In accordance with this conception, the Emperor
and his assistants, when officiating before the Altar
of Heaven, always face the North.3 The Pole-star
itself is a prominent object of worship.4 And how
prevalent this localization of the abode of God at
1 Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. iii., Pt. i., p. 34 n. See further,
Legge, Spring Lectures on the Religions of China, London, 1880, p.
175, and the not well understood prayer in Douglas, Confucianism
and Tauism, London, 1879, P- 2?8- From these and other references
it is plain that Confucians and Tauists alike identified the northern
sky with the abode of God.
2 Vol. iv., p. 194. So, likewise in West Mongolian thought the
celestial pole and the " apex of the Golden Mountain " are identical :
" Allan kadasu niken nara Tagri-dschin urkilka. Apex mentis
aurei, nomine Cardo Coeli, Stella polaris." Uranographia Mongolica.
Fundgruben des Orients, Bd. iii., p. 181.
3 See English Translation of the Chinese Ritual for the Sacrifice to
Heaven. Shanghai, 1877 : pp. 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 48.
4 Joseph Edkins, Religion in China, p. 115. Compare G. Schlegel,
Uranographie Chinoise, pp. 506, 507.
THE EDEN ZENITH. 21 /
the Pole remains after four thousand years may be
illustrated by the following incident narrated by
Rev. Dr. Edkins : " I met on one occasion a school
master from the neighborhood of Chapoo. He
asked if I had any books to give away on astronomy
and geography. Such books are eagerly desired by
all members of the literary class. . . . The inquiry
was put to him 'Who is the Lord of heaven and
earth ?' He replied that he knew none but the Pole-
star, called in the Chinese language Teen-hwang-ta-
te, — the Great Imperial Ruler of Heaven." 1
Seventh. The Ancient German and the Finnic Con
ception. — Like the ancients, when praying and sac
rificing to the gods, the pagan Germans turned their
faces toward the North.2 There, in the northern
heaven, at the top of Yggdrasil, the world-axis, stood
the fair city of Asgard, the home of the Asen. The
Eddas expressly say of it that it was built " in the
Centre of the World." 3 At that point, whence alone
1 Religion in China, p. 109. This title irresistibly suggests the
Assyrian one, Dayan-Same, " Judge of Heaven." Transactions So
ciety Bib. Archeology, iii. 206.
2 Jakob Grimm, " Betende und opferende Heiden schauten gen Nor-
den." Deutsche Mythologie, Bd. 5., p. 30.
3 Grimm, " Im Mittelpunkte der Welt." Deutsche Mythologie, p.
778. The following is from the Prose Edda : " Then the sons of Bor
built in the middle of the universe the city called Asgard, where
dwell the gods and their kindred, and from that abode work out so
many wondrous things both on the earth and in the heavens above it.
There is in that city a place called Hlidskjalf, and when Odin is
seated there upon his lofty throne he sees over the whole world, dis
cerns all the actions of men, and comprehends whatever he contem
plates. His wife is Frigga, the daughter of Fjorgyn, and they and
their offspring form the race that we call the ^sir, — a race that dwells
in Asgard the old, and in the regions around it, and that we know to
be entirely divine." Mallet, Northern Antiquities, p. 406. The ex
pression, " from that abode work out so many wondrous things," re
calls to mind Job's description of the North as the place " where God
doth work.1
2l8 PARADISE FOUND.
the whole world of men is ever visible by night and
by day, stood Hlidskjalf, the watch-tower of Odin.
From this " partie septentrionale du del" he and
Frigga, like the great gods of the Etruscans, " veil-
latent sur toute la terre." 1
Among the ancient Finns the name of the su
preme god was Ukko. In their mythology he is
sometimes represented as upbearing the firmament,
like Atlas, and sometimes he is called Taivahan Na-
panen, "the Navel of Heaven." As Castren shows,
this curious title is given him simply because he re
sides in the centre or Pole of heaven.2 In the great
epic of this people, the Kalevala, the abode of the
supreme God is called Tahtela,8 which word simply
means " Place of TdJiti : Esthonian, Taht, the Polar
star."
We have not exhausted our materials in hand for
the illustration of this point,4 but surely we have
presented enough. Reviewing this singular una
nimity of the ancient nations, no thoughtful reader
can fail to be impressed with its significance. No
other explanation of it can be so simple and obvious
as the supposition that the heaven which over
arched the cradle of humanity was a heaven whose
zenith was the northern Pole.
Before concluding the present chapter, another
point of considerable interest should be noticed. In
reading the Edenic traditions of the ancient nations
1 Vide supra, p. 214 n. 2.
2 Castren, Finnische Mythologie (Tr. Schiefner), pp. 32, 33.
3 Rune II, 32, 36, 40.
4 See, for example, Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific. Lon
don, 1876 : p. 17.
THE EDEN ZENITH.
as given in Part fourth, the question may well have
suggested itself to the reader, " How is it that, with
such perfect unanimity on the part of contemporary
nations in respect to the north-polar position of the
cradle of mankind, the traditions of the Hebrews
alone should have placed it in the East ? " In the
facts just now reviewed we have a key to this puz
zle. The only word in Genesis which connects Eden
with the East is Kedem (Qedem). This term " prop
erly means that which is before or in front of a per
son, and was applied to the East from the custom of
turning in that direction when describing the points
of the compass." 1 From Gen. xiii. 14, it would
seem to have acquired this association with the East
as early as the days of Abraham, but according tc
"the custom" of a particular time or people it could
mean one point of the compass as well as another.
It was simply the "front-country." In late historic
times among the Hebrews it was the East, and ac
cordingly the West was the country " behind," the
North the "left hand," the South the "right," as
before noticed. In Egypt, however, the usage was
different, — the " front - country " being either the
North or the South, — which we cannot certainly
tell, as Egyptologists are divided on the question.
Pierret thinks that it was South, and that accord
ingly the right hand was West and the left East.2
Chabas and others, however, exactly reverse the
meaning of the hieroglyphics translated "right" and
" left," and hold that in designating the points of
the compass the ancient Egyptian faced the North.
1 Smith's Bible Dictionary, Art. " East."
2 Dictionnaire d"1 Archeologie Egyptienne. Paris, 1875 : P- I9I«
Comp. pp. 116, 118, 187, 344, 351, 364, 371, 392, 399.
22O PARADISE FOUND.
Among the Akkadians and Assyrians, if we may rely
upon a questionable statement of Lenormant, still
another adjustment prevailed : the right hand was
the North, the left the South, and the "front" direc
tion, of course, the West.1
In view of these facts it is plain that, anterior to
the fixation of Hebrew usage, that is in pre-Abra-
hamic times, Qedem, or the "front-country," may as
well have meant the North as any other quarter.
And there is much reason to suppose that it did
have this meaning. We have seen that this was pe
culiarly the sacred quarter of the whole Asiatic and
Egyptian world. Toward it faced all earliest priest
hoods and worshipers of whom we have any knowl
edge.2 What so natural as that they should con
template and designate the different quarters of the
world from the standpoint of their normal posture
in worship ? And if once we assume that such was
the usage of all the Noachidae anterior to their dis
persion, and that accordingly "the front -country "
meant the North, all at once becomes plain. Gen
esis then unites with universal ethnic tradition in
locating the cradle of mankind in the North. The
record then reads, "And the Lord God planted a
garden in the North country, in Eden." And, in
precise agreement herewith, it is down from the
mountainous heights of this North country — "from
1 Fragments de Berose, p. 367 ; also, 380, 419. But compare Ckal-
daan Mag?'c, pp. 168, 169, where, by identifying the West with the
point " behind the observer," he directly contradicts the account given
in his Commentary on Berosus. The paragraph does not appear in
the original French edition of the work.
2 Even among the aborigines of America and Africa we are told
that " the West is the left hand and the East the right." Massey,
The Natural Genesis, vol. ii., p. 231.
THE EDEN ZENITH. 221
Qedem " — that the descendants of Noah in after
time come into " the plain in the land of Shinar "
(Gen. xi. 2). So is cleared up simultaneously an
other mystery, for how to bring the first colonizers
of Shinar into the Tigro-Euphrates valley, from any
probable Ararat by any probable " journeying from
the East" or, as the margin gives it, "eastwards"
has always perplexed the commentator.1
This interpretation harmonizes for the first time
Gen. ii. 8 with Eze. xxviii. 13, both now referring to
one and the same point of the compass, the sacred
North. Again, the well-known difficulty of harmo
nizing the references to " the children of Qedem,"
found in the oldest of the Hebrew Scriptures, such
as Gen. xxix. I, and Job i. 3, is solved at once by
this interpretation. At the same time it gives us a
location for "the land of Uz" exactly correspond
ing with the explicit declaration of Josephus : " Uz
founded Trachonitis and Damascus ; this country
lies between Palestine and Coelosyria." 2
To most readers, this solution of the problem of
the exceptional character of the Hebrew tradition
will probably at once commend itself as eminently
satisfactory. To some, however, it may seem a little
difficult of belief that one and the same term could
in successive ages have found application to differ
ent points of the compass.3 To such the following,
1 Of course, this interpretation proceeds upon the common assump
tion that Miqqedem is translocative in signification, and that the land
of Shinar was in the Tigro-Euphrates basin. In another note I have
indicated the possibility that the land of Shinar was in primeval Qe
dem, in which case Miqqedem in Gen. xi. 2 should be translated pre
cisely as in Gen. ii. 8, " in the North country."
2 Antiquities of the Jews, Bk. i., 6, 4.
3 See diagram illustrative of the discrepancy between Euphratean
and Egyptian orientations in Brown, Myth of Jtirke. London, 1883 :
222 PARADISE FOUND.
written, of course, with no reference to our problem,
will be of special interest : " The names of the four
cardinal points, and, what is very remarkable, the
hieroglyphic signs by which they are expressed, are
in a certain measure the same in the Akkadian and
Chinese cultures. This I intend to show in a spe
cial monograph upon the subject; but that which is
here of importance to note is the displacement of
the geographical horizon produced in the establish
ing of the ' hundred families.' The South, which
was so termed on the cuneiform tablets, corresponds
in Chinese to the East, the North to the West, the
East to the South, making thus a displacement of
quarter of a circle. It would be interesting if, on
examination of the Akkadian and Assyrian names,
we could find that they in their turn denoted an
early displacement of which only these traces re
main to us." 1
p. 99. Comp. p. 101, bot. Mr. G. Massey, in his vast astrotypolog-
ical medley, refers to the horizon-displacement, but affords no intelli
gible explanation. He says, " In making the change to a circle of
twelve signs, the point of commencement in the North was e slewed '
round eastward. Hence the Akkadian Mountain of the World be
came the Mountain of the East. Mount Meru, the primordial birth
place in the North, likewise became the Mountain eastward. This
may be followed in the Adamah of the Genesis ; and in the Book of
Enoch it says, ' The fourth wind, which is named the North, is divided
into three parts, and the third part contains Paradise.' Thus Eden,
which began at the summit of the Mount, and descended into the
Circle of Four Quarters prepared by Yima, in the Avesta, against
the coming Deluge, was finally planted in the twelfth division of the
zodiac of twelve signs, as the garden eastward." The Natural Gen
esis. London, 1883 : vol. ii., p. 263.
1 Terrien de Lacouperie, Early History of the Chinese Civilization.
London, 1880 : p. 29. On this curious matter Mr. T. G. Pinches
threw some new light at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Arche
ology, Feb. 6, 1883. In May Mr. Terrien de Lacouperie read a paper
before the Royal Asiatic Society, entitled " The Shifting of the Car-
THE EDEN ZENITH. 22$
Possibly the usage of ancient Egypt may enable
us to put our solution in yet simpler form. If we
may accept the teachings of the learned Maspero,
the Egyptians often reduced the four quarters or di
rections to two, using the term East in a sense suffi
ciently broad to include both East and North, and
the term West in a sense sufficiently broad to in
clude both West and South.1 If, then, Moses, who
in his education was an Egyptian, wrote in accord-
dinal Points in Chaldaea and China," which will appear in his forth
coming work on The Origin of Chinese Civilization. Similar inter
changes and identifications of the North and West are referred to
by Menzel, Die vorchristliche Unsterblichkcitslehre, i., p. 101. See
also Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., pp. 275-284.
1 "J'ai expose depuis longtemps dans mes cours au College de
France une theorie d'apres laquelle les Egyptiens auraient divise les
quatre points en deux series groupees : Nord-Est, Sud-Ouest. . . .
Ce n'est que par suite de la classification dont je viens de parler qu'on
met souvent a 1'Ouest les regions proprement situees au Sud, ou re-
ciproquement au Sud les regions situees a 1'Ouest. L'application de
cette idee a 1'Est nous mene aussi a croire que Ton a pu dire du Ta-
noutri qu'il etait au Nord." (M. Maspero, in a letter to the author,
under date of December 20, 1882.) This usage could hardly have
arisen among any people not acquainted with the spherical figure of
the earth. How easily it could arise among us is illustrated by Sir
John de Maundeville, who, writing in A. D. 1356, located Paradise so
far to the East of England that he could no longer correctly describe the
place by this term. Thus, after speaking of the Terrestrial Paradise as
situate far " to the East, at the beginning of the earth," he says, " But
this is not that East which we call our East, on this half, where the
sun rises to us ; for when the sun is East in those parts towards Ter
restrial Paradise, it is then midnight in our parts on this half, on ac
count of the roundness of the earth, of which I have told you before ;
for our Lord God made the earth all round in the middle of the firma
ment." Wright, Early Travels in Palestine. London, 1848 : p. 276.
The nearest way to an Eden thus located would, of course, be north
ward. Its location could therefore be described with equal correct
ness either by the term " eastward " or " northward." Still another
interesting theory of its origin will suggest itself to the thoughtful
student of such facts as those alluded to by Mr. Scribner in Where
iid Life Begin ? pp. 32, 33.
224 PARADISE FOUND.
ance with such a usage, it would be quite possible
to use Qedem for a " front-country " in the North,
and again, without embarrassment, to use the same
term in speaking of the East.1
1 Compare the arrangement of the winds on the ceiling of the Pro-
naos of the temple at Dendera. Brugsch, Astronomische Inschriften
ctitagyptischer Denkmdler. Leipsic, 1883 : pp. 26 hot., and 27 top.
CHAPTER IV.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH.1
He is the god who sits in the centre, on the Navel of the Earth ; and he is the
interpreter of religion to all mankind. — PLATO.
But at the Navel of the Earth stands Agni, clothed in richest apparel. — Rig
Veda.
To whom then will ye liken God ? It is HE that sitteth upon the CHUG of the
Earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers. — ISAIAH.
After proceeding some distance we paused to take breath where the crowd was
more dense and obstinate than usual : and I was seriously informed that this was
the exact Navel of the Earth, and that these obstinate pilgrims were bowing and
kissing it, — The Land and the Book.
Jedes Volk hat einen Nabel der Erde. — KLEUKER.
STUDENTS of antiquity must often have marveled
that in nearly every ancient literature they should
encounter the strange expression " the Navel of
the Earth." Still more unaccountable would it
have seemed to them had they noticed how many
ancient mythologies connect the cradle of the human
race with this earth-navel. The advocates of the
different sites which have been assigned to Eden
have seldom, if ever, recognized the fact that no
hypothesis on this subject can be considered accept
able which cannot account for this peculiar associa
tion of man's first home with some sort of natural
centre of the earth. Assuming, however, that the
human race began its history at the Pole, and that
1 Printed in advance in the Boston University Year Book, vol. xi.
1884.
'5
226 PARADISE FOUND.
all traditional recollections of man's unfallen state
were connected with a polar Eden, the mystery
which otherwise envelops the subject immediately
vanishes.
We have already seen that the term " navel " was
anciently used in many languages for " centre," and
that the Pole, or central point of the revolving con
stellations, was the " Navel of Heaven." But as to
the celestial Pole there corresponds a terrestrial one,
so it is only natural that to the term the " Navel of
Heaven " there should be the corresponding expres
sion the " Navel of the Earth."
Beginning with Christian traditions, let us make
a pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
at Jerusalem. There, in the portion belonging to
the Greek Christians, we shall discover a round pil
lar, some two feet high, projecting from the marble
pavement, but supporting nothing. If we inquire as
to its purpose, we shall be informed that it is de
signed to mark the exact centre or " Navel " of the
Earth.1 Early pilgrims and chroniclers refer to this
1 As my own inspection of this monument was nearly thirty years
ago, I have thought it well to make inquiry as to its present state.
The following, written under date of Oct. 28, 1884, by my obliging
friend, Dr. Selah Merrill, the United States Consul at Jerusalem, and
well known as an Oriental archaeologist, will be read with much inter
est : " The stone to which you refer still stands in the middle of the
Church (Greek) of the Holy Sepulchre, and is called the Centre or
Navel of the Earth. It is called a ' pillar,' although it is not a pil
lar, but a vase, conforming in its general shape to a large, tall fruit
dish. The top is in the form of a basin, with a raised portion in its
centre ; that is, in the bottom of the basin. I was told that at every
feast bread was laid on this pillar. I am assured that it is called the
Centre of the Earth only by the Arab or native Christians of Syria,
and not by the Greeks proper ; also, that every Greek church in
Syria that is built after the form of this one has such a ' pillar ' in
the centre. Within two or three years past, an old church has been
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 22 /
curious monument, but its antiquity no one knows.1
As usually described, it is a monument of the geo
graphical ignorance of those who placed it there, a
proof that they supposed the edge of the "flat disk"
of the earth to be everywhere equidistant from this
stone. In reality, it is a monument of primeval as
tronomic and geographic science.'
excavated a little distance north of the Damascus gate. In the Pal
estine Fund Report for October, 1883, I wrote some account of this
to supplement what had been written before by others. In the centre
of that church there is a similar stone, but that is a real pillar. This
church is no doubt very old, and is popularly spoken of as the ' Church
of St. Stephen.' In my judgment it stands on the site of an older
church.
" It seemed to me a little singular that this object should be called
a ' pillar ' (Amud), when it is only a vase, or vase-shaped ; but as the
tradition connected with it is very old, the name may have come down
from the time when the object used for this purpose was actually a
pillar or column."
It is interesting to compare with the foregoing the description given
by Bernard Surius, of Brussels, in the year 1646, particularly as at
that time the " Oriental Greeks " seem to have had no scruple in call
ing the pillar the Centre of the Earth : " Omtrent het midden steckt
eenen witten marmer-steen uyt, van twee voeten in syn vierkant, daer
een rondt putteken in is, 't welck soo de Oostsche Griecken seggen,
het midden van den aerdt-bodem is." Reyse van Jerusalem. Ant
werp, 1649 : P- 664.
1 Bishop Argulf, in his pilgrimage, A. D. 700, "saw some other
relics, and he observed a lofty column in the holy places to the north
of the Church of Golgotha, in the middle of the city, which at mid
day at the summer solstice casts no shadow ; which shows that this is
the centre of the earth." Wright, Early Travels in Palestine, p. 4.
As late as A. D. 1102, it still seems to have been outside the then ex
isting Church. Bishop Saewulf says, "At the head of the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre, in the -wall outside, not far from the place of Cal
vary, is the place called Compos, which our Lord Jesus Christ him
self signified and measured with his own hand as the middle of the
world according to the words of the Psalmist, ' God is my king of
old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.' " Ibid., p. 38. In
1322, however, it is described by Sir John de Maundeville as " in the
midst of the Church." Ibid., p. 167. At one time in the Middle
Ages, the spot seems to have been marked by a letter or inscription.
228 PARADISE FOUND.
To find the true symbolical and commemorative
character of this pillar, we need to remind ourselves
of a tendency ever present and active among men.
We have already alluded to the scores of " Calva
ries " which have been set apart in Roman Catholic
lands, and hallowed as memorial mounts. Up the
side of each leads a Via dolorosa, with its different
" stations," each recalling to the mind, by sculptured
reliefs or otherwise, one of the immortal incidents
of the Passion. On the summit is the full cruci
fixion tableau, — the Saviour hanging aloft upon
the cross, between two crucified malefactors. The
spear, the reed with the sponge, the hammer, — all
are there, sometimes the ladder also ; and near by,
the tomb wherein never man was laid. In the minds
of the worshipers it is a holy place.
Even in our Protestant republic, on the shore of
Lake Chautauqua, we have seen successfully carried
out, in our own day, a complete reproduction of Pal
estine. Thousands have visited it to take object-
lessons in Sacred Geography. From it these thou
sands have gained clearer ideas of the relative
positions and bearings of Hermon and Tabor and
Olivet, of Kedron and Cherith and the Jordan, of
Nazareth and Hebron and the Holy City, than 'else
they ever would have had. What here has been
done for purposes of instruction has elsewhere and
often upon a greater or smaller scale, been done for
purposes of direct religious edification, and for the
gratification of religious sentiment.
Now, just as Christians love to localize in their
Barclay, City of the Great King. Philadelphia, 1858 : p. 370. See
Michelant et Reynaud, Itineraries a Jerusalem. Geneve, 1882 : pp,
36, IO44, 182, 230, etc.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 229
own midst their " Holy Places," so the early nations
of the world loved to create miniature reproductions
of Eden, the fair and sacred country in which man
dwelt in the holy morning hours of his existence.1
The traditional temple architecture of many early
religions was determined by this symbolical and
commemorative motive. This was eminently true
of the sacred architecture of the Babylonians, Egyp
tians, Hebrews, and Chinese.2 Koeppen assures us
that " every orthodoxly constructed Buddhist temple
either is, or contains, a symbolical representation of
the divine regions of Meru, and of the heaven of
the gods, saints, and Buddhas, rising above it." 3
Lillie says, "The thirteen pyramidal layers at the
top of every temple in Nepal represent the thirteen
unchangeable heavens of Amitabha." 4 With what
1 " The Hindus generally represent Mount Meru of a conical figure,
and kings were formerly fond of raising mounds of earth in that
shape, which they venerated like the divine Meru, and the gods were
called down by spells to come and dally upon them. They are called
Meru-sringas, or the peaks of Meru. There are four of them either
in or near Benares ; the more modern, and of course the more per
fect, is at a place called Sar-nath. It was raised in the year of Christ
1027. . . . This conical hill is about sixty feet high, with a small but
handsome octagonal temple on the summit. It is said in the inscrip
tion that this artificial hill was intended as a representation of the
worldly Meru, the hill of God, and the tower of Babel, with its seven
steps or zones, was probably raised with a similar view and for the
same purpose." — Wilford in Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., p. 291.
2 Miller, "The Pyramidal Temple," in the Oriental and Bib. Jour
nal. Chicago, 1880: vol. i., pp. 169-178. Also, Boscawen, in the
same, 1884, p. 118. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Chaldaa
and Assyria. London and New York, 1884 : vol. i., pp. 364-398.
8 Die Religion des Buddha, vol. ii., 262.
4 Buddha and Early Buddhism, p. 51. We find the same symbol
ism even among the civilized aborigines of America. Thus " the
temple at Tezcuco was of nine stories, symbolizing the nine heavens"
Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii., p. 184. Compare pp. 186, 195, 197;
also 532-537.
23O PARADISE FOUND.
astonishing elaboration this idea has sometimes been
carried out may be seen in the Senbyoo temple in
Mengoon, near the capital of Burmah.1 That the
natural features of the landscape were often utilized
in producing these symbolic shrines and holy places
is only what we should expect. " The Buddhists of
Ceylon," as Obry states, " have endeavored to trans
form their central mountain, Deva-Kuta (Peak of the
Gods), into Meru, and to find four streams descend
ing from its sides to correspond with the rivers of
their Paradise." 2
Again, in the " rock-cut " temples of Ellora, we
have, in like manner, a complete representation of
the Paradise of Siva. Faber develops the evidence
of this practice among the ancients with great full
ness, and with respect to the Hindus and Buddhists
says, " Each pagoda, each pyramid, each montiform
' high-place/ is invariably esteemed to be a copy of
the holy hill Meru," the Hindu's Paradise.3
From " Records of the Past," vol. x., p. 50, we see
that the Egyptians had the same custom of building
temples in such a manner that they should be sym
bolical of the abode of the gods. So in Greece and
1 See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. London, 1870: pp. 406-
429.
2 Le Bercea^^ de V E spice Humaine, p. 118.
3 Origin of Pagan Idolatry. London, 1816 : vol. i., p. 345. So an
American writer says, " Akkad, Aram, and all the other ' highlands '
of antiquity were but reproductions, traditionary inheritances from
this primitive highland, this Olympus of all Asia. . . . Similar notions
were associated at a later period with Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and
with the Mohammedan Mecca and other sacred localities. Such
ideas [as that they were respectively in the centre of the world] are
no indication of the ignorance of the ancients : they were symbolical
and traditionary conceptions inherited from the sacred mount of
Paradise." The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal. Chi
cago, 1881 : p. 312. Compare 1884, p. 118.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 2$l
Rome the citadel mounts in their cities had quite as
great religious as military significance. Lenormant,
speaking of Rome and Olympia, remarks, " It is im
possible not to note that the Capitoline was first of
all the Mount of Saturn, and that the Roman archae
ologists established a complete affinity between the
Capitoline and Mount Cronios in Olympia, from the
standpoint of their traditions and religious origin
(Dionysius Halicarn., i., 34). This Mount Cronios
is, as it were, the Omphalos of the sacred city of
Elis, the primitive centre of its worship. It some
times receives the name Olympos." 1 Here is not
only symbolism in general, but also a symbolism
pointing to the Arctic Eden, already shown to be
the primeval mount of Kronos, the Omphalos of the
whole earth.2
Now, as Jerusalem is one of the most ancient of
the sacred cities of the world, and, at the same time,
the one where the tradition of the primeval Paradise
was preserved in its clearest and most historic form,
it would be strange if, in all its long history, no king
or priesthood had ever tried to enhance its attrac
tiveness and sanctity by making it, or some part of
it, symbolize Earth's earliest Holy Land, and com
memorate man's earliest Theocracy. That the at-
1 Beginnings of History, pp. 151, 153.
2 Among the Romans no city, or even camp, was rite established
and founded without a sacred Umbilicus. It " fiel in den Schnitt-
punkt des Decumanus und Cardo Maximus, d. h., wohin die Via decu-
mana,s\ch mit der Via principalis \i\z\ii\. ; dieser Schnittpunkt befand
sich vor dem introitus Praetorii ; da stand auch die Ara castrorum,
da war der Umbilicus des Systems. Diesen Umbilicus nun finden
\vir in Rom noch in Mauerresten vorhanden am nordostlichen Anfang
des Forum wieder, welche Stelle als Umbilicus bezeichnetwurde." J.
H. Kuntze, Prolegomena z^^r Geschichte Roms. Leipsic, 1882: p. 154.
See notes below, on the cities of Cuzco and Mexico.
232 PARADISE FOUND.
tempt was made is beyond a doubt. To this day the
visitor is shown the spot where, according to one
tradition, Adam was created.1 Not many feet away,
under the custody of another religion, he finds the
sacred rock-hewn grave in which at least the head
of the first of men was buried.2 In the little Gihon,
the name of one of the Paradise rivers still lives.
The miraculous virtue of the Pool of Bethsaida
was ascribed in early Christian legend to its being
in subterranean contact with the Tree of Life,
which grew in the midst of Paradise.3 Christ's
cross was said to have been made of the wood of the
same tree. The very name, Mount Sion, is a memo
rial one. The Talmudic account of " The Strength
of the Hill of Sion " shows that the Palestinian
mount was named after the heavenly one, and not
vice versa, as commonly supposed. The true sacred
name of the Holy City is, therefore, not Sion
(though it is often called by the heavenly appella
tion also), but " Daughter of Sion." She is simply
1 Murray's Handbook for Syria and Palestine. London, 1858 : Pt. i.,
p. 164. Another account reads, " E de Iherusalem a Seint Habraham
sunt. viii. liwes, e la fust Adam fourme." Itineraires & Jerusalem,
et Descriptions de la Terre Sainte. Rediges en frangais aux XP,
XIP, XIIP siecles. Publics par Michelant et Reynaud. Geneve,
1882 : p. 233.
2 See F. Piper, Adams Grab auf Golgotha. Evangelischer Kalen-
der> 1861 : p. 17 ff. (illustrated). Philippe Mousket (A. D. 1241), in
his descriptive poem on the Holy Places, makes it the tomb of both
Adam and Eve : —
" Et la tout droit u li ludeu
Crucifiierent le fil Deu,
Fu Adam, li premiers om, mis
Et entieres et soupoulis,
Et Eve, sa feme, avoec lui," etc.
(Michelant et Reynaud, ut supra, p. 115.)
8 W. Henderson, Identity of the Scene of Man's Creation, Fall, and
Redemption. London, 1864 : p. 10.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 233
a copy, a miniature likeness, of the true mount and
city of God " in the sides of the North." 1
So confident is Lenormant that Solomon and
Hezekiah intentionally conformed their capital to
the Paradisaic mount, and intentionally introduced
in their public works features which should sym
bolize and commemorate peculiarities of Eden, that
he uses the fact as an unanswerable argument
against those imaginative critics who would place
the composition of the second chapter of Genesis
subsequent to the Babylonian exile. He says, —
" Another proof, and a very decisive one in my
opinion, of the high antiquity of the narrative of
Genesis concerning Eden, and of the knowledge of
it possessed by the Hebrews long before the Captiv
ity, is the intention — so clearly proved by Ewald —
to imitate ' the four rivers ' which predominated in
the works of Solomon and Hezekiah for the distri
bution of the waters of Jerusalem, which, in its turn,
was considered as the Umbilicus of the Earth (Ezek.
v. 5), in the double sense of centre of the inhabited
regions and source of the rivers. The four streams
which watered the town and the foot of its ram
parts — one of which was named Gihon (i Kings
i- 33> 38 ; 2 Chron. xxxii. 30, xxxiii. 14), like one of
the Paradisaic rivers — were, as Ewald has shown,
reputed to issue through subterranean communica
tions from the spring of fresh water situated be
neath the Temple, the sacred source of life and
purity to which the prophets (Joel iii. 1 8 ; Ezek.
xlvii. 1-12; Zech. xiii. i, xiv. 8 ; cf. Apoc. xxii. i) at
tach a high symbolic value." 2
1 See chapter iii. of the present Part.
2 " Ararat and Eden." The Contemporary Review, vol. iii., No. 27
lAm. ed., p. 46).
234 PARADISE FOUND.
In this citation, in addition to a strong assertion
of the symbolical character of the topography and
waterworks of Jerusalem, we have the location it
self included in this symbolism. The city is said to
have been the Umbilicus or Navel of the Earth, for
two reasons : first, because of its relation to sur
rounding countries ; * and, second, because of its
containing the source of the rivers. In our next
chapter, this last reason will become more significant
than even the writer intended. At present we will
only add that the true philosophy of this symbolical
centrality of Jerusalem is found in two facts : first,
the Hebrews had a tradition that primeval Eden
was the Centre of the Earth : 2 and, second, by styling
Jerusalem the Navel of the Earth, as they did, it was
symbolically all the more assimilated to the prim
itive Paradise which in so many other ways it sa
credly commemorated.
Passing to the field of Hellenic tradition, we are
told by all modern interpreters that the Greeks
shared the "narrow conceit and ignorance of all
ancient nations," and supposed their own land to
occupy the middle of the "flat earth-disk." And
because of certain expressions in Pindar and a pas
sage in Pausanias, it is affirmed as a first principle
in the geography of the ancient Greeks that Delphi
was believed to be the exact topographical centre-
point of the whole earth.
1 That this traditionally-given first reason for the appellation is not
well founded is evident from the fact that the Hebrews had a " Navel
of the Earth," farther to the North, before ever they had possessed
themselves of the site of Jerusalem (Judg. ix. 37).
2 In Origen, Sdectis ad Genesin, we read, " Tradunt Hebraei lo
cum, in quo Paradisum plantavit Deus, Eden vocari, et ajunt ipsum
mundi medium esse, ut pupillam oculi" Compare Hershon, Tal*
mudic Miscellany, p. 300.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 235
Such a representation is far from satisfactory.
For while the term " Omphalos of the Earth " was un
doubtedly applied in a sense to Delphi, it belonged
to it only as the name Athens belongs to many a
town thus designated in America. It had other and
older topographical connections and associations.
We find traces of the same title in connection with
Olympos, with Ida, with Parnassos, with Ogygia,
with Nyssa, with Mount Meros, with Delos, with
Athens, with Crete, and even with Meroe. In the
multiplicity of these localizations, the people seem to
have lost the clue to the original significance of the
conception, and to have contrived crude etymologi
cal myths of their own for the explanation of what
seemed to them a remarkable designation.1
The moment we make the true original Omphalos
of the Earth the North Pole, and invest it with sa
cred traditionary recollections of Eden life, all this
confusion becomes clear. The " centre-stone" of
Delphi, like the Omphalium of the Cretans, becomes
merely a memorial shrine, an attempted copy of the
great original. And if all the Olymps and Idas
and Parnassos mounts were alike convenient repro
ductions and localizations of the one celestial moun
tain of the gods at the North Pole, what wonder if
we find each of them in some way designated as the
Centre of the Earth.
Homer's " Omphalos of the sea," Calypso's isle,
1 " A peine Penfant [Zeus] venoit de naitre, que les Curetes le por-
terent sur 1'Ida. Dans le trajet, le cordon ombilical se detacha et
tomba au milieu d'une plaine qui prit de la le nom de o/juf>a\bs, nom-
bril (nom qu'elle devoit avoir auparavant)." — T. B. Emeric-David,
Jupiter ; Recherches sur ce Dieu, sur son Culle, etc., Paris, 1833, t. i.,
p. 248, referring to Callimachus, Hymnus in Jovem, v. 44 ; Diodorus
Sic., v. 70.
236 PARADISE FOUND.
has in like manner all the marks of a mythico-tradi-
tional north polar Eden. Its name, Ogygia, connects
it with a far-off antediluvian antiquity.1 It is situ
ated in the far North, and Odysseus needs the blast
of Boreas to bring him away from its shores on
the homeward journey. Its queen, Calypso, is the
daughter of Atlas ; and Atlas' proper station in
Greek mythology, as elsewhere shown, is at the ter
restrial Pole. Its beauty is Paradisaic, it being
adorned with groves and " soft meadows of violets,"
— so beautiful, in fact, that " on beholding it even an
Immortal would be seized with wonder and delight."2
Finally, identifying the place beyond all question,
we have the Eden " fountain," whose waters part
into "four streams, flowing each in opposite direc
tions."3
In Mount Meros we have only the Greek form
of Meru, as long ago shown by Creuzer.4 The one
is the Navel of the Earth for the same reason that
the other -is. Egyptian Meroe (in some Egyptian
texts Mer, in Assyrian Mirukk, or Mirukka), the
seat of the famous oracle of Jupiter Ammon, was
possibly named from the same "World-mountain."
This would explain the passage in Quintus Cur-
tius, which has so troubled commentators, wherein
the object which represented the divine being is
described as resembling a "navel set in gems."6
1 See Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, i., 775 et seq.
2 Odyssey, v. 63-75.
8 Ibid.
4 Symbolik, vol. i., p. 537.
6 " Id quod pro deo colitur, non eandem effigiam habet, quam
vulgo diis accommodaverunt : umbilico maxime similis est habitus,
smaragdo et gemmis coagmentatus." Quintus Curtius, De Reb. Ges.,
iv. 7, 23. See notes in Lemaire's ed., Paris, 1822; also Diodorus
Siculus, iii. 3. Capt. Wilford notices another coincidence : " The
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH.
When the two doves of Zeus, flying from the two
opposite ends of the world, determine the cosmic
centralness of " Parnassos," it is of an antediluvian
Parnassos that the myth is speaking.1 It is that
mount on whose polar top we have already found
the " domicilium " of Zeus.
Nonnos, in describing the symbolical peplos which
Harmonia wove on the loom of Athene, says, " First
she represented the earth with its omphalos in the
centre ; around the earth she spread out the sphere
of heaven varied with the figures of the stars. . . .
Lastly, along the exterior edge of the well-woven
vestment she represented the Ocean in a circle."2
That Delphi or the Phocian Parnassos is the ompha
los here mentioned is far enough from credible. It
is the Pole, and the manner in which the term is in
troduced shows that it was perfectly understood by
every reader, and needed no explanation. The true
shrine of Apollo was not at Delphi, but in that older
earth-centre of which Plato speaks in the motto pre
fixed to this section. His real home is among "the
Hyperboreans," in a land of almost perpetual light ;
and it is only upon annual visits that he comes to
Delphi.3 The remembrance of this fact would have
Pauranics say that . . . the first climate is that of Meru ; among the
Greeks and Romans the first climate was that of. Meroe." — Wilford
in Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., p. 289.
1 "Before this time" — the time of the deluge of Deucalion —
" Zeus had once wanted to know where the middle of the earth was,
and had let fly two doves at the same moment from the two ends of
the world, to see where they would meet ; they met on Mount Par
nassos, and thus it was proved beyond a doubt that this mountain
must be the centre of the earth." — C. Witt, Myths of Hellas. Lon
don, 1883 : p. 140.
2 Lenormant, Beginnings of History, p. 549.
8 " Au debut de 1'hiver Apollon quitte Delphes pour le pays mys-
terieux des Hyperboreans, ou rfegne une lumiere constante, et qui
238 PARADISE FOUND.
helped the interpreters of Pindar out of more than
one perplexity.1 According to Hecataeus, Leto, the
mother of Apollo and his sister Artemis, was born
on an island in the Arctic Ocean, " beyond the
North wind." Moreover, on this island inhabited by
the Hyperboreans, Apollo is unceasingly worshiped
in a huge round temple, in a city whose inhabitants
are perpetually playing upon lyres and chanting to
his praise.2 So reports Diodorus (it., 47) ; and here
with agrees the imaginary journey of Apollonius of
Tyana, — a namesake of Apollo, — who tells of his
journey far to the North of the Caucasus into the
regions of the pious Hyperboreans, among whom he
found a lofty sacred mountain, the Omphalos of the
Earth.3
In the Phaedo we have a charming description of
Plato's terrestrial Paradise. " In this fair region,"
echappe aux rigueurs de 1'hiver." Maxima Collignon, Mythologie
Figuree de la Grece. Paris, 1883 : p. 96. See Alcaeus' Hymn, re
ferred to by Menzel, Unsterblichkeitslehre, i., p. 87. The present
writer is not the first to be reminded here of polar Meru : " Bei ihnen
(den Hyperboreern), wohnen bestandig der Sonnengott Apollo und
seine Schwester Artemis, wie auf dem indischen Meru ebenfalls In-
dra, der Lichtgeist und Sonnengott, wohnt." Dr. Heinrich Liiken,
Die Traditionen des Menschengeschlechts, oder die Uroffenbarung
unler den Heiden. Minister, 2d ed., 1869 : p. 73.
1 See Olympian Odes, iv., 74 ; vi., 3 ; viii., 62 ; xi., 10. Nemean,
viL, 33. Frag., i., 3, m& passim ; comp. Olymp., ii., iii. ; Pyth., iv., etc.
2 " The Dorian worship of Apollo was primitively Boreal." Hum-
boldt, Cosmos (Bohn's ed.), ii., 511. Compare Pindar's expression in
second Olympian Ode : " the Hyperborean folk who serve Apollo."
8 " Cette montagne est sacree ; c'est 1'ombilic du monde." Mo-
reau de Jonnes, L1 Ocean des Anciens, p. 162. As to the ^Egean
Delos, the best explanation Keary can give is this : " Delos was after
ward deemed to be the navel of the earth, because, being in special
favor with Apollo, it might be thought to stand under the eye of the
midday sun" (!) Primitive Belief, p. 183. Compare, on the other
hand, Pindar's Fragment in honor of Delos, the Homeric Hymn to
Apollo, and the Japanese myth of Onogorojima before described.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 239
Socrates is made to say, " all things that grow
— trees and flowers and fruit — are fairer than
any here ; and there are hills and stones in them
smoother and more transparent and fairer in color
than our highly-valued emeralds and sardonyxes and
jaspers and other gems, which are but minute frag
ments of them : for there all the stones are like our
precious stones, and fairer still. The temperament
of their seasons is such that the inhabitants have
no disease, and live much longer than we do, and
have sight and hearing and smell and all the other
senses in much greater perfection. And they have
temples and sacred places in which the gods really
dwell, and they hear their voices, and receive their
answers, and are conscious of them, and hold con
verse with them, and they see the sun, the moon,
and the stars as they really are." 1
If we ask as to the location of this divinely beau
tiful abode, every indication of the text agrees with
our hypothesis. It is right under the eye when
the world is looked at from its summit, the North
ern celestial pole.2 Viewed from the standpoint of
Greece and its neighbor lands it is " above" — it
is " the upper Earth" the dazzling top of the " round"
world. In it, moreover, is the Navel of the Earth,
/ueo-oycua, inhabited by happy men.
If anything is needed to disprove the common no
tion that geographical ignorance and national self-
esteem first governed the ancient peoples in locating
in their own countries " navels " of the earth, it is
furnished by what is, in all probability, the oldest
epic in the world, that of Izdhubar, fragments of
1 Phcedo, 1 10, in.
2
240 PARADISE FOUND.
which have survived in the oldest literature of Baby
lonia. These fragments show that the earliest in
habitants of the Tigro-Euphrates basin located " the
Centre of the Earth," not in their own midst, but in
a far-off land, of sacred associations, where " the
holy house of the gods" is situated, — a land "into
the heart whereof man hath not penetrated ; " a
place underneath the " overshadowing world-tree,"
and beside the " full waters." 1 No description could
more perfectly identify the spot with the Arctic Pole
of ancient Asiatic mythology. Yet this testimony
stands not alone ; for in the fragment of another
ancient text, translated by Sayce in " Records of the
Past," we are told of a " dwelling" which "the gods
created for " the first human beings, — a dwelling in
which they " became great " and "increased in num
bers," and the location of which is described in
words exactly corresponding to those of Iranian, In
dian, Chinese, Eddaic, and Aztec literature ; namely,
"in the Centre of the Earth." 2
In the Hindu Puranas we are told over and over
that the earth is a sphere, and that Mount Meru is
its Navel or Pole.3 But the expression ndbhi, or
" Navel " of the earth, is older than the Puranas,
though the very meaning of Purana is "ancient."
Like the term " Navel of Heaven," it occurs in the
1 A. H. Sayce, Babylonian Literature. London, 1878 : p. 39. The
Sunis of Northwestern Africa, in our own day, fix the centre of the
world outside their own territory, " between themselves and the Sou
dan." R. G. Haliburton, Notes on Mount Atlas and its Traditions.
Salem, Mass., 1883 : P- 8-
2 Records of the Past, xi., pp. 109 seq. George Smith, Chaldaan
Account of Genesis, 2d ed., p. 92. Lenormant, Beginnings of History,
app., pp. 508-510.
8 " The convexity in the centre is the navel of Vishnu." — Asiatic.
Researches, vol. viii., p. 273.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 24!
hymns of the earliest Veda. But where was the
sacred shrine to which it was applied ? It was no
holy place in Bactria, or in the Punjab. Nothing
tends to locate it in India. On the other hand, the
fifth verse of the one hundred and eighty-fifth hymn,
mandala first, of the Rig Veda, seems most plainly
to fix it at the North Pole. In this verse Night and
Day are represented as twin sisters in the bosom
of their parents Heaven and Earth ; each bounding
or limiting the other, but both kissing simultane
ously the Ndbhi of the Earth. Now, everywhere
upon earth, except in the polar regions, Night and
Day seem ever to be pursuing and supplanting
each other. They have no common ground. At
the Pole — and only there — they may be said, with
locked arms, to spin round and round a common
point, and unitedly to kiss it from the opposite sides.1
This plainly is the meaning of the poet ; and re
membering all the legendary splendors of the polar
mountain around which sun and moon are ever mov
ing, we must pronounce the figure as beautiful as
it is instructive.2
1 The following versions may be compared : " Zusammenlcommend,
die beiden Jungen, deren Enden zusammenstossen, die verbiindeteten
Schwestern in der beiden Aeltern Schosse, kussend den Nabel der
Welt, schiitzt uns, Himmel und Erde, vor Gewalt." — Ludwig, i. 182.
"Going always together, equally young and of like termination,
sisters and kindred, and scenting \sic\ the navel of the world, placed
on their lap as its parents ; defend us, Heaven and Earth, from great
danger." — Wilson, ii., 188.
" Die Beiden Jungfraun an einander grenzend,
" Die Zwillingsschwestern in dem Schoss der Eltern,
" Die im Verein der Welten Nabel kiissen, —
" Beschirmt vor grauser Noth uns Erd' und Himmel."
(Grassmann, ii., 177.)
Compare R. K, i., 144, 3 ; ii., 3, 6, and 7 ; et passim.
2 A later poet has borrowed the same idea : —
16
242 PARADISE FOUND.
In perfect accord herewith, we find the bard ask
ing, in another hymn, where the Navel of the Earth
is ; and in doing it he associates it as closely as pos
sible, not with some central home-shrine in his own
land, but with the extreme " End of the Earth" — an
expression used again and again, in ancient lan
guages, for the Pole and its vicinity.1
Again, in another Vedic passage, the Navel of the
Earth is located upon "the mountains," and this as
sociation points us to the North.2 Still stronger evi
dence of its polar location is found in other hymns,
where the supporting column of heaven — the Atlas
pillar of Vedic cosmology — is described as stand
ing in or upon the Navel of the Earth.3
Finally, so unmistakable is the Vedic teaching on
this subject that a recent writer, after asserting with
all his teachers that the cosmography of the Vedic
bards was " embryonic," and their earth a " flat
disk" overarched by a solid firmament, which was
" soldered on to the edge of the disk at the horizon,"
nevertheless, later, in studying one of the cosmo-
gonical hymns of DIrghatamas, the son of Mamata,
reaches the conclusion that the singer had knowl
edge both of the celestial and of the terrestrial Pole,
and that, in seeking to answer the question as to the
" Around the fire in solemn rite they trod,
The lovely lady and the glorious god ;
Like Day and starry Midnight when they meet
In the broad plains at lofty Meru 's feet."
(Griffiths' Translation of Kumara Sambhava, or The Birth of the War-God.
London, 1879.)
1 The following is Grassmann's translation : " Ich frage nach dern
aussersten Ende der Erde, ich frage wo der Welt Nabel ist," etc
Rig Veda, i., 164, 34 ; comp. 35.
2 Rig Veda, ix., 82, 3.
8 Ibid., ix., 86, 8 ; ix., 79, 4; ix., 72, 7, etc.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 243
birth-place of humanity, he locates it precisely at the
point of contact between the polar mountain and
the Pole of the northern sky.1
We have seen that, according to Old-Iranian tra
dition also, man was created in the "central" divis
ion of the earth. The primordial tree, which " kept
the strength of all kinds of trees," was " in the vi
cinity of the Middle of the Earth." 2 The primeval
ox, which stood by the Paradise river when the de
stroyer came, was " in the Middle of the Earth." 3
Mount Taera (Pahl. : Terak), the celestial Pole, and
Kakad-i-Daitik, the mountain of the terrestrial Pole,
are each described in similar terms : the one as
"Centre of the World," the other as "Centre of the
Earth." 4 The expression Apdm Nepdt, the " Navel
of the Waters," occurs in the Avestan writings again
and again, and is always applied either to the world-
fountain from which all waters proceed, or to the
spirit presiding over it.5 But as this world-foun-
1 The reader will no doubt be glad to see the exact language : " Le
contact de la terre et du ciel, serait-il 1'hymen mysterieux d'oii 1'hu-
manite naquit ? Le del, ce serait le pere qui engendre ; la mere, ce
serait la grande terre, ayant sa matrice dans la partie la plus haute de
sa surface, sur les hauts monts ; et ce serait la que le pere ' feconde-
rait le sein de celle qui est en meme temps, son epouse et sa fille.'
On a cru voir ce point de contact dont parle Dirghatamas, — Outta-
n&yah tchamwah, ' endroit septentrional oil les deux surfaces se
touchent/ — au pole nord, connu de 1'auteur ; 1'etoile polaire se nom-
mant outtanapada. II est certain que la somme des connaissances
positives collectionees par ce philosophe etait relativement impor
tant." — Marius Fontane, Inde Vedique. Paris, 1881 : pp. 94, 200.
2 West, Pahlavi Texts, pt. i., p. 161.
8 West, Pahlavi Texts, pt. i., p. 162.
4 Ibid., pp. 22, 36. So, in consequence of the duality and opposite
polarity alluded to in the context, " Hell is in the middle of the earth,"
at the South Pole, p. 19.
6 See Index to Darmesteter's Zend-Avesta. Compare the Vedic
hymn (ii., 35), "An den Sohn der Wasscr," Apam nap&t, whose loca-
244 PARADISE FOUND.
tain, Ardvi Sura, is located in the north polar sky
(see next chapter), we have here also a recognition
of a vfQY\d.-omp/ialos, inseparable from the ancient
and sacred Paradise-mountain at the Pole.1
The Chinese terrestrial Paradise is described not
only as " at the Centre of the Earth," but also as
directly under Shang-te's heavenly palace, which is
declared to be in the North star, and which is some
times styled " Palace of the Centre." 2 Very prob
ably the historic designation, " The Middle King
dom," was originally a sacred name,3 commemora
tive of that primeval middle country which the
Akkadian called Akkad, the Indian Ilavrita, the Ira
nian Kvaniras, and the Northman Idavollr. In the
funeral rites of China, this supposition finds a co
gent confirmation.4
tion is "a« dent hochsten Orte" (v., 13, Grassmann). Compare quota
tion from Ritter, in part iv., chapter first, supra.
1 " Dieser Albordj, der Lichtberg, der Nabel der Erde, wird von
Sonne Mond und Sternen umgeben." — Carl Ritter, Erdkundc, Bd.
viii., p. 46.
2 " In Kwen-lun is Shang-te's lower recreation-palace. . . . Shang-
te's wife dwells in this region, immediately over which is Shang-te's
heavenly palace, which is situated in the centre of the heavens, as his
earthly one is in the centre of the earth. . . . The Queen mother
dwells alone in its midst, in the place where the genii sport. At the
summit there is a resplendent azure hall, with lakes inclosed by pre
cious gems, and many temples. Above rules the clear ether of the
ever-fixed, the polar, star." — Condensed from the Chinese Recorder,
vol. iv., p. 95.
3 Frederik Klee, Le Deluge. Paris, 1847 : p. 188, note.
4 " Quand je vous ai parle des libations en usage a la Chine, je
vous ai dit, Monsieur, qu'on se tournait vers le pole septentrional
pour faire les libations en 1'honneur des morts. En considerant la
veneration de ce peuple pour ses ancetres, on n'apergoit qu'une expli
cation naturelle de cet usage ; c'est de dire que les Chinois se tour-
nent vers le pays du monde, ou ils ont pris naissance, et oil leur an
cetres reposent." — Bailly, Lettres sur VOrigine des Sciences et sui
celle des Peuples de VAsie. Paris, 1777 : p. 236.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 245
Passing to Japan, it is curiously interesting to
note that the Ainos, who are supposed to have been
the first inhabitants, are believed to have come into
the archipelago " from the North ; " 1 that their
heaven is on inaccessible mountain-tops in the same
quarter ; 2 and that their name, according to some
authorities, etymologically signifies " Offspring of
the Centred 3 In burial, their dead are always so
placed that when resurrected their faces will be set
toward the lofty northern country from which their
ancestors are believed to have come, and to which
their spirits are believed to have returned.4
1 Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, p. 27.
2 " These [a mythological pair] were the ancestors of the Ainos.
Their offspring, in turn, married ; some among each other, others
with the bears of the mountains [the Bear Tribe?]. The fruits of
this latter union were men of extraordinary valor and nimble hunters,
who, after a long life spent in the vicinity of their birth, departed to
the far North, where they still live on the high and inaccessible table
lands above the mountains ; and, being immortal, they direct, by
their magical influences, the actions and the destiny of men ; that is,
the Ainos." — Ibid., p. 28.
8 Ai-no-ko. Ibid., p. 29.
4 " It may not be devoid of interest to mention here that the Ainos
bury their dead with the head to the South. . . . The Aino, to-day,
as he did in ancient times, buries his dead by covering the body with
matting, and placing it with the head to the South in a grave which
is about three feet deep." Notes on Japanese Archccology with es
pecial reference to the Stone Age, by Henry von Siebold, Yokohama,
1879, p. 6. Let no reader imagine this a meaningless rite of un
developed savages. " From all these observations, as well as from
the traditions of the Ainos, in which are ever-recurring laments for a
better past ; and from many peculiarities in their customs, we must
conclude that the Ainos are to be classed with those peoples that
have earlier been more richly supplied with the implements of civili
zation, but have become degraded through isolation. Prehistoric
discoveries . . . favor this view. The pits found there for dwellings
indicate that the Ainos came from the North to Yezo." Professor
Brauns, of Halle. Translated from Memoirs of the Berlin Anthropo
logical Society, in Science, Cambridge, 1884; p. 72.
246 PARADISE FOUND.
Taking these facts in connection with those pre
sented in chapter second of the preceding part,
one can hardly evade the conclusion that, when
Griffis informs us that the Japanese considered their
country as lying at "the top of the world," and when
others say that the Japanese once regarded their
country as the " Centre of the World," 1 it is most
probable that these writers have applied to the
Japan of to-day ideas which originally belonged to
a far-distant prehistoric polar Japan, the primitive
seat of the race, as it has lived on in these most
ancient traditions of the Ainos.
In Scandinavian mythology we meet with a sim
ilar idea. In the Eddas, both Asgard and Idavollr
are represented as in " the Centre of the World ; "
and at least one author, in explaining the reason of
it, has come within a hair's-breadth of the truth,
though missing it.2
The ancient Mexicans conceived of the cradle of
the human race as situated in the farthest North,
upon the highest of mountains, cloud-surrounded,
1 " The Japanese in their earlier separation regarded their country
as the centre and most important part of the world." — J. J. Rein,
Japan, Travels and Researches, English translation. London, 1884 :
p. 6.
2 " Nos ancetres scandinaves pla9aient la demeure de leurs dieux,
Asgard, au milieu du monde, c'est-a-dire au centre de la surface de
la terre d'alors. II est assez remarquable qu'une telle idee n'est pas
sans fondement, puisqu'il faut admettre, comme je crois 1'avoir de-
montre, que 1'Europe, 1'Asie, et 1'Amerique, unis vers le pole nord,
formaient avant le deluge un seul continent." Frederik Klee, Le
Deluge, Fr. ed. Paris, 1847 • P- l88 n- But> bY clinging to " the high
est mountains of Asia," as the centre originally meant, M. Klee loses
the chief advantage of his supposed union of the continents at the
Pole. — The Teutonic omphalos of the world is preserved at Finzingen,
near Altstadt, in Saxe-Weimar. See Kuhn and Schwartz, Nord'
deutsche Sagen. Leipsic, 1848 : p. 215.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 247
the residence of the god Tlaloc. Thence come the
rains and all streams, for Tlaloc is the god of waters.
The first man, Quetzalcoalt, after having ruled as
king of the Golden Age in Mexico, returned by
divine direction to the primeval Paradise in the
North (Tlapallan), and partook of the draught of
immortality. The stupendous terraced pyramid-
temple in Cholula was a copy and symbol of the
sacred Paradise-mountain of Aztec tradition, which
was described as standing " in the Centre of the
Middle - country " 1 Some of the Mexican myths
represent the mountain as now "crooked," or turned
partly over. For the true explanation of this see
above, pp. 192-196.
Among the ancient Inca-subjects of Peru2 was
1 Im Centrum des Mittellands. Luken, Tradifionen, p. 75; citing
Clavigero, Storia del Messico, torn, ii., 13, 14. " Die Mexicaner op-
ferten auf den hochsten Bergen weil sie glaubten, dass auf ihnen
Tlaloc, der Herr des Paradieses wohne. Sie wurden einerseits als
der Mittelpunkt der Erde betrachtet, andererseits aber als die Statte,
welche dem Himmel am ndchsten ist, und ihm in naherer Beriihrung
als die Erde selbst steht." Keerl, Die Schb'pfungsgeschichte, p. 799.
In like manner the national temple of Tlaloc and Vizilputzli, his
brother, stood in the centre of the city of Mexico, whence four cause
way roads conducted East, West, North, and South. In the centre
of the temple was a richly ornamented Pillar of peculiar sanctity.
Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii., p. 292. The Quiche prayer to
the " Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth," would seem to rest upon
similar conceptions of the true abode of God. Popol Vuh. Max
Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop. New York, 1872 : vol. i., p.
335-
2 "The centre and capital of this great territory was Cuzco (i. e.,
'navel'), whence to the borders of the kingdom branched off four
great highways, North and South and East and West, each traversing
one of the four provinces or vice-royalties into which Peru was di
vided." TheLandofthelncas, by W. H. Davenport Adams. Lon
don, 1883 : P- 2O- ^n tne central temple here, too, there was a Pillar,
placte dans le centre d'un cercle dans Vaxe du grand temple et tra-
verstc -tar un diamttre de Vest a Pouest. P. Dabry de Thiersant,
248 PARADISE FOUND.
found the same idea of a Navel of the Earth, and
even among the Chickasaws of Mississippi.1
Thus is all ancient thought full of this legendary
idea of a mysterious, primeval, holy, Paradisaic
Earth-centre, — a spot connected as is no other
with the "Centre of Heaven," the Paradise of God.
Why it should be so no one has ever told us ; but
the hypothesis which places the Biblical Eden at the
Pole, and makes all later earth navels commemora
tive of that primal one, affords a perfect explana
tion. In the light of it, there is no difficulty in
understanding that Earth-centre in Jerusalem with
which we began. The inconspicuous pillar in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre symbolizes and com
memorates far more than the geographical ignorance
of mediaeval ages. It stands for the Japanese pillar
by which the first soul born upon earth mounted to
the sky. It stands for the World -column of the
East-Aryans and the Chinvat Bridge of Iran. It
stands for the law-proclaiming pillar of orichalcum
in Atlantis, placed in the centre of the most central
land. It stands for that Talmudic pillar by means
of which the tenants of the terrestrial Paradise
mount to the celestial, and, having spent the Sab-
De rOrigine des Indiens du Nouveau- Monde et de leur Civilisation.
Paris, 1883 : p. 125. Still more interesting is it to note that the pre
decessors of the Peruvians are reported to have had an idea of the
work of the creation of the world as proceeding from the North to the
South. Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions. Philadelphia,
1881, p. 334-
1 " Some of the large mounds left in Mississippi were called
'navels* by the Chickasaws, although the Indians are said not to
have had any idea whether these were natural mounds or artificial
structures. They thought Mississippi was at the centre of the earth^
and the mounds were as the navel in the middle of the human body."
— Gerald Massey, referring to Schoolcraft, i. 311.
THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH. 249
bath, return to pass the week below. It symbol
izes Cardo, Atlas, Meru, Hara-berezaiti, Kharsak-
Kurra, — every fabulous mountain on whose top
the sky pivots itself, and around which all the heav
enly bodies ceaselessly revolve. It perpetuates a
religious symbolism which existed in its region be
fore ever Jerusalem had been made the Hebrew
capital, — recalling to our modern world the tabbur
ha-aretz of a period anterior to the days of Samuel.1
In tradition it is said to mark the precise spot
" whence the clay was taken, out of which the body
of Adam was modeled." It does so, but it does it
in a language and method which were common to
all the most ancient nations of the earth. It points
not to the soil in which it stands, but to the holier
soil of a far-away primitive Eden.2
1 Judg. ix, 37 (margin).
2 The genuinely scientific basis of this ancient symbolism is vividly
shown in our above given sketch-map of the actual relations of all
the continents to the North Pole.
CHAPTER V.
THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER.
Als ich erfunden han.
Us dent paradise ran
Zufuhten baum undgras,
Und alles das darynne -was,
Zu guter moss ein wasser gross,
Das in vier teil darnache floss.
LUTWIN.
Wir haben hier ein merkwurdiges Stromsystem. — GRILL.
"AND a river went out of Eden to water the
garden, and from thence it was parted and became
into four heads."
In chapter second of Part Second we presented
the simple and natural interpretation suggested by
the hypothesis of a primitive circumpolar continent.
If the reader will kindly turn back to the statement
there made (p. 5 i), he will see in how natural a man
ner the water system of that lost " land of delights "
might have become, in after tradition, the one dis
parted river which waters the whole earth.
The insuperable difficulties of all hitherto at
tempted identifications of the four rivers are too nu
merous to present here in detail.1 In our interpreta-
1 " We entirely agree with Delitzsch [the elder] that ' Paradise is
lost,' and the four streams are on this account a riddle which cries,
' Where is Paradise ? ' the question remaining without an answer."
Ebers, ALgypten und die Biicher Mose, p. 30. See McClintock and
Strong's Cyclop&dia, Arts. " Gihon," " Pison," " Eden," etc.
" Wherever there is a river-head that can be made to run on all-fours,
even by assuming the existence of water-channels no longer extant,
THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER. 2$ I
tion the original river is from the sky ; the division
takes place on the heights at the Pole, and the four
resulting rivers are the chief streams of the circum-
polar continent as they descend in different direc
tions to the surrounding sea. Does such a view
find any support in the traditions of the ancient
world ?
That it does will be clear to any one who has
carefully read thus far. Let us take the rivers of
the Persian cradle of the race. Where do they rise ?
If the investigator of this question have made no
previous studies in Comparative Sacred Hydrog
raphy, he will be surprised to find that in Persian
thought, not only the Paradise rivers, but also all
the rivers of the whole earth, have but one head
spring and but one place of discharge.
This head-spring is the Ardvi-Sura, situated in
heaven, — the heaven of the Pole. " This heavenly
fountain," says Haug, summarizing the contents of
the Aban Yasht, — " this heavenly fountain has a
thousand springs and a thousand canals, each of them
forty days' journey long. Thence a channel goes
through all the seven keshvares, or regions of the
earth, conveying everywhere pure celestial waters." *
the Biblical Eden has been discovered, — whether in Asia, Africa,
Europe, or America." Gerald Massey, The Natural Genesis, vol. ii.,
p. 162. We may add that Mr. Samuel Johnson's suggestion (Oriental
Religions ; Persia. Boston, 1885 : p. 253), to the effect that the " four
rivers " of the Hebrew story consisted of two real rivers, the Tigris and
the Euphrates, plus two imaginary " words, that simply mean 'flowing
waters,' and that were used as generic terms for the purpose of mak
ing up the number four, the conventional sign of completeness in all
Eastern mythologies," is a characteristic specimen of the unschol-
arly and dogmatic caprice of pantheistic exegesis in the field of an
cient religious ideas and their history.
1 Essays, 2d ed., p. 198. See Darmesteter's translation : " From
this river of mine alone flow all the waters that spread all over the
252 PARADISE FOUND.
The following is an ancient invocation to Ana-
hita, the spirit of these heavenly waters : " Come
before me, Ardvi-Sura Anahita ! — come down from
yonder stars on to the earth created by Ahura-
Mazda ! Thee shall worship the handy lords, the
rulers of countries, sons of the rulers of countries." l
From its elevation the heavenly height is called
Hugar, i. e., " the lofty : " " Hugar, the lofty, is the
mount from which the water of Ardvi-Sura leaps
down the height of a thousand men." 2 Again it is
written, " Hugar, the lofty, on which the water of
Ardvi-Sura flows and leaps, is the chief of summits,
since it is that above which is the revolution of
Sataves, the chief of reservoirs." 3
As all the rivers of the earth's seven regions, so
all lakes and seas and the ocean itself, are from this
one celestial fountain. "Through the warmth and
clearness of the water, purifying more than other
seven keshvares ; this river of mine alone goes on bringing waters
both in summer and in winter." The Zend-Avesta, Pt. ii., pp. 52-84.
1 Haug, Ibid., p. 198. Darmesteter, Ibid., p. 73.
2 Bundahish (West), xii. 5. The Zend-Avesta (Darmesteter), ii.
P-54-
8 Bundahish, xxiv. 17. When West (Pahlavi Texts, Pt. i., p. 35,
note 6) uses the last clause of this quotation to show that the loca
tion of Hugar is " probably " in the western quarter, his argument
rests upon two mistakes, both of which seem to be shared by all
modern Avestan students. The first mistake is to suppose Sataves a
different star from Tishtar (Tijtrya) ; and the second is the notion
that Tishtar was the star now called Sirius. The fact is that orig
inally Satavaesa and Ti-rtrya were simply two designations for one
and the same object, and that object was not our Sirius, but the Pole
star. I say our Sirius, because there is evidence that this name also
once belonged to a very different heavenly body, and to one situated
in " die Mitte des Himmels" i. e., at the Pole. (Ideler, Sternennamen,
p. 216.) Hugar (Hukairya) is the heavenly height of the polar sky,
high above Hara-berezaiti, whenever this term is applied, as originally,
to the terrestrial polar mount. Abdn Yasht, 88. See Windischmann,
Zoroastrische Studien,^. 171.
THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER. 253
waters, everything continually flows from the source
Ardvi-Sura." * However named, all waters are sim
ply portions of the same heaven-descending stream.
" The other innumerable waters and rivers, springs
and channels, are one in origin with those, so in va
rious districts and various places they call them
by various names." 2 Even plant-sap, and blood, and
milk, and all the seventeen kinds of liquid enumer
ated in the Yashts, are parts of the one cosmic cur
rent. "All these, through growth, or the body which
is formed, mingle again with the rivers, for the body
which is formed and the growth are both one." 3
Everything of a liquid nature, therefore, in the
whole world is conceived of as proceeding from one
source high in the north-polar sky. Whither is it
tending ? What becomes of it all in the end ?
Where do its myriad rills and rivers at last dis
charge ? As according to the cosmological concep
tion so often illustrated in these pages, all start from
the zenith, we should naturally expect all to reunite
at last in the nadir. This is found to be the fact.
But in this nether gathering place the waters, now
polluted from their contact with all the filth and
vileness of the world, are not allowed to rest and ac-
1 Bundahish, ch. xiii., 3. The chapter on Seas.
2 Ibid., xx. 33. Ranha, the original Avestan name of the world-
river, became corrupted into Arahh&m — Arang — Aring — and finally
into Arg. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, pp. 187, 189.
3 Ibid., xxi. 2. Henry Bowman, in his Eighteen Hundred and
Eighty-one ; or the End of the s£on (St. Louis, Mo., 1884, p. 36),
gives the following remarkable interpretation to the heaven-descend
ing river : " The throne of God is the apex, culmination, directly
over the pole's axis, and so in the centre of the city, — corresponding
to the tree of life, which in the old creation was situated in the centre
of the garden, — from which proceeds the ELECTRICAL CURRENT, the
' pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal.' "
254 PARADISE FOUND.
cumulate.1 This cesspool of the universe has
vious bottom. By the various processes of strain
ing, vaporizing, aeration, etc., the polluted waters
are by Tishtar brought back distilled and purified,
and are re-discharged into the zenith-reservoir which
perpetually supplies the gushing streams of Ardvi-
Sura.2 Into such a marvelously complete cosmical
circulatory water system did the Iranic imagination
develop the primitive head - stream of Eden. But
never, even in the most extravagant mythological
adornments of the idea, was it for a moment forgot
ten that the original undivided stream originates in
the north polar sky ; and that its division into earthly
streams and rivers is on the holy mount which
stands in the centre of Kvaniras, the central and
circumpolar keshvare of the whole habitable earth.3
The various fragmentary allusions of the oldest
Greek poets to Okeanos and the rivers would seem
to imply the early existence, and perhaps early loss,
of a similar Hellenic conception of the water cir
culation of the entire earth. Thus, according to
Homer's familiar couplet, it is from Okeanos, in
1 This underworld is the long-misunderstood " cave," in which, in
the Vedic myth, the demons try to imprison the stolen rain-cows, so
that the earth may be cursed with drought.
2 Ibid., xx. 4. Vendiddd, v. 16-19. More fully and graphically
described in Dddist&n-i Dinik, ch. xciii. The ancient idea seems yet
to survive in modern folk-lore : " In der Geschichte von Ikirma und
Chuseima (in den Erzahlungen der 1001 Nachte) sitzen zwei Engel der
eine in Gestalt eines Lowen, der andere in der eines Stieres vor einer
Pforte, Wache haltend und Gott preisend. Die Pforte, welche nur der
Engel Gabriel offnen kann, fiihrt zu einem von Rubingebirgen um-
flossenen Meere, der Quelle aller Wasser auf Erden ; aus ihm schop-
fen Engel die Gewasser der Welt bis zum Auferstehungstage." Justi,
Geschichte des alten Persiens, 1879, P- 80.
8 Compare Spiegel, Erdnische Alterthumskunde. Leipsic, 1871;
vol. i., pp. 198-202.
THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER. 255
some application of the term, that " all rivers and
every sea and all fountains flow." 1 Euripides pre
sents the same idea.2 There is, therefore, one foun
tain of all the world's waters. The same conception
is expressed by Hesiod in his Theogony, where all
rivers, as sons, and all fountains and brooks, as
daughters, are traced back to Okeanos. Then we
have a constant descending movement of all waters
until they reach the world-surrounding Ocean-river
at the equator, beyond which is the Underworld.
From this equatorial ocean, parting off from the
southern or under shore, new branches diverge and
form the river system of the Hadean kingdom.
Other Underworld rivers were perhaps conceived of
as percolating through the earth and emerging to
the surface in the lower hemisphere. There is at
least some evidence that the Greeks, like the Per
sians, had this idea of interterranean water-courses,
and even rivers, resembling the circulation of the
blood in the human body.3 Sometimes these Under
world rivers are represented as four in number, thus
making the circumpolar water system of the Under
world a perfect counterpart of the Eden rivers at
the summit of the upper hemisphere.4 All, more
over, like those of the Persian Underworld, seem to
be plunging forward and ever downward, until in
the last glimpse which the imagination can catch
they are seen streaming from the roof of the grot
of the goddess Styx, and, as Preller expresses it,
1 Iliad, xxi. 195.
2 Hippolytus, 119.
8 Bundahish, viii. 4.
4 " In der Unterwelt gab es ausser dem Styx noch drei Fliisse.
Die Vierzahl entspricht derjenigen der vier Paradiesfliisse." — Wolf
gang Menzel, Die vorchristliche Unsterblichkeitslehre, vol. ii., p. 6.
2 5 6 PARADISE FOUND.
" falling thence, beneath the Earth, downward into
the deep, deep Night." l
Here, then, we have a unitary water system, em
bracing the whole earth, and the remarkable Ho
meric and Hesiodic term d^o/Spoo?, " refluent," may
well imply that the Underworld -n-poxor), or " outflow,"2
returns in nature's perfect order to feed its original
fountain, thus conforming the whole, in every part,
to the sacred hydrography of the Persians.3
Granting this, one should locate the Okeanos-
fountain, not where Preller and Welcker and Volcker
and the other mythographers have hitherto placed
it, but in the farthest North, and in the sky. That
this location was the original one is plain from all
the local implications of the mythological accounts
of the proper home of Okeanos and Tethys, and is
further confirmed by many incidental evidences con
nected with such myths as those of the Eridanus,4 the
Acheloos, the birth of Zeus, and particularly those
of Atlas and his children.5
1 Preller, Griechische Mythologie, i. 29. Plato, in his cosmical
sketch in Phasdo, makes the Hadean rivers pour into Tartaros.
2 Odyssey, xx. 65.
8 " Fountf ul Ida " corresponds almost perfectly to the Iranian
Hugar, down whose sides leap and flow the waters of Ardvi-Sura.
Moreover, in its very name Lenormant and others see a root connect
ing it with Ilavrita, the circumpolar paradisaic varsha of Puranic
geography. It should be added that to Ilavrita corresponds signifi
cantly the Norse Idavollr, or " plain of Ida," which is " in the middle
of the divine abode." Mallet, Northern Antiquities, p. 409.
4 " Der Eridanus ist ursprunglich ein mythischer Fluss." Ideler,
Ursprung der Starnennamen, p. 229. See especially Robert Brown,
Jr., Eridanus. London, 1883.
6 Compare the like conclusion of Grill, Die Erzvdter der Mensch-
heit. Leipsic, 1875 : *•> PP- 222> 223- Grill also claims that the an
cient Germans had a similar world-river, p. 223. I cannot help think
ing that in the descending Ukko's stream and in the ascending Am-
ma's stream of Finnish mythology we have traces of a like cosmic
THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER.
In the most ancient Akkadian, Assyrian, and Bab
ylonian literature there are expressions which seem
clearly to indicate the presence among these peo
ples of a precisely similar conception with respect
to the waters of the world.1 The same is true of
Egyptian literature, but in both these cases the data
are as yet too meagre to make them entirely conclu
sive in argument.2 We therefore pass them by, and
close with a glance at the Eden river of the ancient
Aryans of India.
This, as already seen, is the heaven-born Ganga.
The Vedas call it "the river of the three worlds,"
for the reason that it flows through Heaven and
Earth and the Underworld. In Vedic times "the
original source and home of the waters was thought
to -be the highest heaven (paramam vyoman\ the re
gion peculiarly sacred to Varuna." 3 This is clearly
water circulation. See Castren, Mythologie, p. 45. After reading the
long note in Buxtorfii, Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum et Rabbini-
cum, Lipsiae, 1865, pp. 341, 342, one could also readily believe that
we have here the true origin of the two movements or paths set forth
in the omnifluent philosophy of Heraclitus : r)]v 65b;/ KC£T&>, and rV
65bv 6.v(a. Again, " In the Edda all rivers derive their origin from
that called liver gelmer" Asiatic Researches, vol. viii., p. 321.
1 Attention is only called to the ancient Akkadian hymn given by
George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 392, 393 ; to the exceedingly
interesting article by Professor Sayce on " The Encircling River of
the Snake-God of the Tree of Life," in The Academy, London, Oct. 7,
1882, p. 263 ; and finally to the instructive account of the Akkadian
"mother of rivers" given in Lenormant's Origines, ii. i, p. 133, a
citation from which has already been made on p. 171. See also Rob
ert Brown, The Myth of Kirkt, p. no.
2 " Die ^gypter wussten schon friihe von einem die Erde umflies-
senden Strom." — Grill, Die Erzvater der Menschheit, i., p. 277.
8 E. D. Perry, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1882, p.
134. He adds in a foot-note, " In the Veda, 'water' and all corre
sponding terms, such as stream, river, torrent, ocean, etc., are used
indiscriminately of the water upon the earth and of the aqueous vapor
in the sky or of the rain in the air." Compare M. Bergaigne : " L'eau
17
2$ 8 PARADISE FOUND.
illustrated in scores of passages : for example, in the
beautiful prayer for immortality, where the fourfold l
head-spring of all waters is located in the sacred
Centre of Heaven.2 Sometimes the heaven-sprung
stream is called the Sindhu,3 sometimes the Saras-
vati.4 In the later Mahabharata its head-spring is
placed in the heaven of Vishnu, high above the
lofty Pole-star (Druva). On their descent the ethe
real waters wash the Pole-star, and the Seven Rishis
(the Great Bear), and the polar pivot of " the lu
nar orb," 5 thence falling upon the top of beautiful
des rivieres terrestres est reconnue identique par sa nature et son
origine a celle des rivieres celestes," etc., etc. La Religion Vedique,
torn, i., p. 256. See pp. 251-261.
1 Rig Veda, ix. 74, 6.
2 Rig Veda, ix. 113, 8. Grassmann translates it : —
" Wo Konig ist Vivasvats Sohn,
Und wo des Himmels Heiligthum
Wo ewig stromt des Wassers Born,
Da mache du unsterblich mich."
See the " Hymns to the Waters " generally, and particularly that ad
dressed to Apdm Napdt, the "Navel of the Waters," R. V., ii. 35,
comparing therewith the invocations to the " Navel of the Waters "
in the Yashts. Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, ii. 6 n., 12, 14, 20, 36, 38,
39, 71, 94, 102, 202. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, pp. 177-
186.
3 " Der vedische Inder redet von dem Sindhu /car' e|o%^, dem
Einen himmlischen Strom oder Weltstrom, in dem er die Gesammt-
heit der atmospharischen Diinste und Wasser als in Bewegung be-
griffener und die Erde rings umfliessender sich zur Anschauung
bringt." — Grill, Die Erzvater der Menschheit, Th. i., p. 197.
4 See the Vedic passages in Bergaigne, La Religion Vedique, torn.
i., pp. 325-328.
5 Wilkins, Hindu Mythology. London, 1882 : p. 102. In Indian
cosmology the lunar sphere is concentric with and includes the earth-
sphere ; hence water falling perpendicularly from the celestial to the
terrestrial pole can yet on its way " wash the lunar sphere.'' So too
a mountain at the North Pole, if only high enough, will reach to the
" lunar sphere." Such, in fact, was the case with the Paradise moun-
tain of Indian cosmology, and traces of the idea live on in the Tal«
THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER. 259
Meru. " On the summit of Meru," says the Vishnu
Purana, " is the vast city of Brahma, . . . inclosed
by the river Ganga, which, issuing from the foot of
Vishnu and washing the lunar orb, falls here [on
the top of Meru] from the skies, and, after encir
cling the city,1 divides into four mighty rivers, flow
ing in opposite directions. These rivers are Si'ta,
the Alakananda, the Chakshu, and the Bhadra. The
first, falling on the tops of the inferior mountains
on the east side of Meru, flows over their crests,
and passes through the country of Bhadraswa to
the ocean. The Alakananda flows south to the
country of Bharata, and, dividing into seven rivers
on the way, falls into the sea. The Chakshu falls
into the sea after traversing all the western moun
tains and passing through Ketumala. And the
Bhadra washes the country of the Uttarakurus and
empties itself into the northern ocean." 2
mud and in Patristic theology too plain for even Massey to render
valueless : " Meru is shown to be the mount which reached to the
moon and became a figure of the four lunar quarters. . . . Hence the
tradition that Paradise was preserved during, or was exempt from, the
Deluge because it was on the summit of a mountain that reached to
the moon (Bereshith Rabba, xxxiii.) ; which shows the continuation
of the typical mount of the seven stars into the lunar phase of time
keeping, where the mount of the four quarters carried Eden with it."
The Natural Genesis^ vol. ii., p. 244.
1 Here is probably the origin of the curious notion of the Sabaeans
touching the Euphrates. Or was the borrowing on the other side ?
" Les Soubbas ont la certitude que 1'Euphrate, qui, d'apres eux,
prend sa source sous le trone d'Avather (personnage qui preside au
jugement des ames et dont le trone est place sous retoile polaire),
passait autrefois a Jerusalem." M. N. Siouffi, La Religion des Soub
bas ou Sabtens. Paris, 1880 : p. 7, note. Jehovah's city here takes
the place of Brahma's.
2 The Vishnu JPurana, Wilson's version, vol. vii., p. 120. Compare
herewith the notions of the Chinese Buddhists : " With reference to
this land of Jambu-dwipa [the earth], the Buddhists say that in the
26O PARADISE FOUND.
Here, again, as our interpretation of Genesis re
quires, the four rivers traced back to their origin
bring us to the summit of the earth at the Pole, —
to the one river which descends from the north polar
sky. Curious confirmations of this primitive con
ception come even from the most distant conti
nents.1 Late Christian legend shows evident traces
of it, for in Maundeville's description of the Para
dise-fountain he says, " All the sweet waters of the
world above and beneath take their beginning from
that well of Paradise ; " and again, " Out of that well
all waters come and go" — giving thus clear expres
sion to the idea of a unitary cosmic water circula-
midst of it is a centre (heart), called the lake A-nieou-to ( Anavataptu) ;
it lies to the south of the Fragrant Mountains, and to the north of the
great Snowy Mountains (Himavat). It is 800 li in circuit. In the
midst of this lake is the abode of a Naga, who is in fact the trans
formed appearance of Dasabhumi Bodhisatwa (or of the Bodhisa-
twas of the ten earths). From his abode proceed four refreshing
rivers, which compass Jambu-dwipa. At the east side of the lake,
from the mouth of a silver ox, flows out the Ganges River. After
compassing the lake once it enters the sea towards the southeast.
From the south side of the lake, from the mouth of a golden elephant,
flows the Sindhu [Indus] River. After compassing the lake once it
enters the sea on the southwest. On the west side of the lake, flow
ing from the mouth of a horse of lapis-lazuli, flows the river Foh-tzu
(Vakshu, i. e., Oxus), which, after compassing the lake once, enters
the sea on the northwest. On the north side of the lake, flowing
from a crystal lion, flows the river Sida [Hoang-ho], which after mak
ing one circuit flows into the sea on the northeast." Beal, Buddhist
Literature in China. 1882 : p. 149-
1 Thus in Africa, among the Damaras, " the highest deity is Oma-
kuru, the Rain-giver, who dwells in the far North." E. B. Tylor,
Primitive Culture, Am. ed., vol. ii., p. 259. So also in America:
" Die alten Mexikaner glaubten, das Paradies liege auf dem hb'chsten
Berge, wo die Wolken sich versammeln, von wo sie Regen bringen,
und von wo auch die Fliisse herabkommen." Luken, Traditionen, i.,
p. 115. And this Paradise-mountain was in the farthest North. See
the pathetic prayer to Tlaloc in Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii., pp.
325-330-
THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER. 26 1
tion.1 So, again, in the apocryphal " Revelation of
the Holy Apostle Paul," the angel who was showing
the apostle the wonders of the heavenly city brought
him to just such a World-river, whose spring was
in heaven, but whose main body surrounded the
earth.
"And he set me upon the river whose source
springs up in the circle of heaven, and it is this river
which encircleth the whole earth. And he says unto
me : This river is Ocean."2
1 Compare verses 482-487 of the Old German legend of Brandan
in Carl Schroeder, Sanct Brandan. Erlangen, 1871 : p. 6l : —
" Vor dem sale stunt ein brunne,
" uz dem vloz milch und win,
" waz mohte wunderlicher sin.
" ouch olei und honicseim daruz vloz
" daz an vier enden sich ergoz."
The editor (p. 105) connects this last line with the quadripartite
river of Paradise, and the lines immediately following give it an un
equivocally cosmical significance : —
" Von dem selben brunnen
" haben die wurze saf gewunnen
" die got liez gewerden ie."
2 The Apocryphal Gospels, Acts and Revelations. Ante-Nicene
Christian Library, vol. xvi., p. 483.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CENTRAL TREE.
The Tree of Life,
The middle tree, and highest there that grew.
MILTON.
Sowohlder Apfelbaum und die Quelle, als auch der Drache des Hesperidengar~
tens, werden in den Mythen und Mdrchen der meisten Volker in das Centrum der
Natur, an den Gipfel des Weltberges, an den Nordpol verlegt, — WOLFGANG
MENZEL.
IN the centre of the Garden of Eden, according
to Genesis iii. 3, there was a tree exceptional in
position, in character, and in its relations to men.
Its fruit was "good for food," it was " pleasant to
the eyes," " a tree to be desired." * At first sight it
would not perhaps appear how a study of this tree
in the different mythologies of the ancient world
could assist us in locating primitive Paradise. In
the discussions of such sites as have usually been
1 Was this "tree of knowledge " identical with the " tree of life " ?
Possibly. " The tradition of Genesis," says Lenormant, Beginnings,
p. 84, " at times appears to admit two trees, one of Life and one of
Knowledge, and again seems to speak of one only, uniting in itself
both attributes (Gen. ii. 17 ; iii. 1-7)." Compare Ernst von Bunsen,
Das Symbol des Kreuzes bei alien Nationen. Berlin, 1876 : p. 5. To
make the whole account relate to one tree it would only be necessary
first to translate the last clause of ch. ii. 9 " the tree of life also in the
midst of the garden, even the tree of knowledge of good and evil ; "
and then the last clause of ch. iii. 22 " and now lest he continue to
put forth his hand and to take of the tree of life," etc., — for both of
which constructions there are abundant precedents, if only the gam
be rendered with the freedom used in some other passages. As to
the first, see I Sam. xvii. 40 ; xxviii. 3 ; Dan. iv. 10 ; as to the second,
the Hebrew grammars on the use of the future. Compare also Prov.
iii. 13, 1 8, where wisdom is a tree of life.
THE CENTRAL TREE. 263
proposed it could not ; but if the Garden of Eden
was precisely at the North Pole, it is plain that a
goodly tree standing in the centre of that Garden
would have had a visible and obvious cosmical signif
icance which could by no possibility belong to any
other. Its fair stem shooting up as arrow-straight as
the body of one of the " giant trees of California," far
overtopping, it may be, even such gigantic growths
as these, would to any one beneath have seemed
the living pillar of the very heavens. Around it
would have turned the " stars of God," as if in hom
age ; through its topmost branches the human wor
shiper would have looked up to that unmoving
centre-point where stood the changeless throne of
the Creator. How conceivable that that Creator
should have reserved for sacred uses this one natural
altar-height of the Earth, and that by special com
mand He should have guarded its one particular
adornment from desecration ! (Gen. ii. 16, 17.) If
anywhere in the temple of nature there was to be
an altar, it could only be here. That it was here
finds a fresh and unexpected confirmation in the sin
gular agreement of many ancient religions and my
thologies in associating their Paradise-Tree with the
axis of the world, or otherwise, with eqttal unmistak-
ableness, locating it at the Arctic Pole of the Earth.1
That the Northmen conceived of the universe as
1 " The Mythical Tree, like the Pillar and the Mount, is a type of
the celestial Pole." Massey, The Natural Genesis, vol. i., p. 354. The
arguments of Professor Karl Budde in favor of eliminating the Par
adise-tree from the original Genesis account of the Garden of Eden
betray a strange lack of insight. Die biblische Urgeschichte. Giessen,
1883 : pp. 45-88. Even Kuenen refuses to entertain so arbitrary a
notion, and M. Reville well exclaims, What would a Paradise be with
out VArbre de Vie !
PARADISE
a tree (the Yggjjrasfl) is well known to ordinary
readers. Its roots are in the lowest hell, its mid-
branches inclose or overarch the abode of men, its
top reaches the highest heaven of the gods. It was
their poetical way of saying that the whole world
is an organic unity pervaded by one life. As the
abode of the gods was in the north polar sky, the
summit of the tree was at that point, its base in
the south polar abyss, its trunk coincident with the
axis of heaven and earth.1 It was, therefore, in po
sition and in nature precisely what an idealizing
imagination magnifying the primitive tree of Para
dise to a real World-tree would have produced.2
But while most readers are familiar with this
Norse myth, few are aware how ancient and univer
sal an idea it represents. This same tree appears
in the earliest Akkadian mythology.3 And what is
precisely to our purpose, it stood, as we have before
seen, at *' the Centre " or Pole of the earth, where
is " the holy house of the gods." * It is the same
1 Mencel, * Dieses Sinnbfld entsteht urspriinglich aus der Vorstel-
lung der Weltachse." Dit vorckristkcke UnsterWchkatslthre, i. 70.
* See •* Les Cosmogonies Aryennes," par J. Darmesteter, Remit
Critique. Paris, 1881 : pp. 470-4761
* " By the full waters grew the giant ' overshadowing tree,1 the
Yggdrasfl of Noise mythology, whose branches were of 'lustrous
crystal,' rTtrrwfing downwards even to the deep.** Sayce, Babylonian
Literature, p. 39. Compare Lepormant, Btgmmimgs of History, pp. 83-
107. Hid Professor Finzi duly considered the Tree of Life in Ak
kadian tradition, he could hardly have felt " constrained " to ascribe
the origin of the sacred tree of the Awjifo* fy^ipw*^ *P "Aryan,
•ore particularly Iranian influences." Ricfrche per lo Studio delT
Amtickiti Assira, p. 553, note.
* " In Eridu a dark pine grew. It was planted in a holy place.
Its crown was crystal white, which spread towards the deep vault
above. The abyss of Hea was its pasturage in Eridu, a canal full of
waiers. Its station was the centre of this earth. Its shrine was the
couch of Mother ZHram. The (roof) of its holy house like a forest
THM CENTRAL TREE.
tree which in ancient" Egyptian mythology
die sarcophagus of Osiris, and out of which the
.-;..'._ .: . ..:- : =--.-;_ ".:.-: :..:-....-: ". : :..- :.- . -j
to be taken. But this was only a«M*Jn*r form of
the Tat-piilar, which is the axis of the world.1 In
the light of comparative cosmology it is quite im
possible to agree with Mr. Renouf in his treatment
of the Tree in Egyptian mythology. It is neither
" the rain cloud," nor " the light morning cloud," nor
"the transparent mist on the horizon." His own
citations of texts dearly show that under all its
names the Egyptian Tree of Life is a true World-
tree, whose trunk is coincident in position and direc-
spread ks shade. There wnc •one who i •fcn il mat withii JL It
- :--
1 "It was most fifcdfy at Monpbrs, too, Oat he [Flak]
=.: 1 - .::;; - --.-•.::'.:-:• .- / : . ' : : : : ;
" -- ; - :-: -. ? _-i.-;
-i- - : ", . : ----:.-
—. :-:---. -: '. - -
1 . I -
.- -—: - r
-- ' :- -- - i .:.-
. - 1 . i : - - L.-
of Osn
trace of art, proves
=:.- i-:i- :c , ; : :
-,._. . . .., . . . . t.t...
%««, pp. 44 47- See ai»
:: -:- n: .;: - : 2-
266 PARADISE FOUND.
tion with the axis of the world ; a tree in whose
sky-filling branches Bennu, the sun-bird, is seated ;
a tree from whose north polar top the " North-
wind" proceeds; a tree which, like the Yggdrasil,
yields a celestial rain that is as life-giving as Ardvi-
Sura's, and that descends, not merely upon the fields
of Lower Egypt, but, like Ardvi-Sura's, to the Under
world itself, refreshing " those who are in Amenti" 1
The super-terrestrial portion of the Egyptian's Ygg
drasil, therefore, — like that of the Northman's, —
stands at the Arctic Pole.
The Phoenicians, Syrians, and Assyrians had each
their sacred tree in which the universe was symbol
ized.2 In the lost work of Pherecydes the former
is represented as a " winged oak." 3 Over it was
thrown the magnificent veil, or peplos, of Harmo-
nia, on which were represented the all-surrounding
Ocean with his rivers, the Earth with its omphalos
in the centre, the sphere of Heaven varied by the
figures of the stars.4 But as this self-interpreting
1 SeeRenouf, " Egyptian Mythology, particularly with Reference to
Mist and Cloud." Transactions of the Society for Biblical Arcktzology.
London, 1884: pp. 217-220. A beautiful confirmation of our view
is found in the important text in which " the abyss under the earth "
(die Tiefe unter der Erde] is poetically expressed by the term "the
cavity of the Persea (die Hbhle der Persea}. Brugsch's version, from
which the above German expressions are taken, may be seen in the
Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde. Leipsic,
1881 : pp. 77 ff. Surely no opening in an ordinary cloud could be
called the subterranean deep.
2 " W. Baudissin is wrong in supposing it unknown to the Phosni-
cians." — Lenormant, Beginnings of History, vol. i., p. 104 n.
8 But Spvs was originally a generic term for tree. See Curtius,
Etymologic, s. v.
4 " This veil is identical with the starry peplos of Harmonia."
Robert Brown, Jr., The Unicorn. London, 1881 : p. 89. The Myth
of Kirke. London, 1883: p. 71.
THE CENTRAL TREE. 267
symbol was furnished with wings to facilitate its con
stant rotation, it is plain that we have in it, not only
a World-tree, but also one the central line of whose
trunk is one with the axis of heaven and earth.1 In
the language of Maury, " It is a conception identi
cal with the Yggdrasil of Scandinavian mythology." 2
That section of the tree, therefore, which reaches
from the abode of men into the holy heavens rises
pillar-like from the Pole of the earth to the Pole of
the sky.
Among the Persians the legendary tree of Para
dise took on two forms, according as it was viewed
with predominant reference to the universe as an
organic whole, or to the vegetable world as proceed
ing from it. In the first aspect it was the Gaoke-
rena (G6kard) tree, or " the white Horn " (Haoma =
Soma) ; in the second, the "tree of all seeds," the
" tree opposed to harm." Of the former it is writ
ten, " Every one who eats of it becomes immortal ;
. . . also in the renovation of the universe they pre
pare its immortality therefrom ; it is the chief of
plants." 3 Of the second we read, " In like manner
1 " Thus the universe definitively organized by Zeus, with the assist
ance of Harmonia, was depicted by Pherecydes as an immense tree,
furnished with wings to promote its rotary motion, — a tree whose roots
were plunged into the abyss, and whose extended branches sustained
the unfolded veil of the firmament decorated with the types of all ter
restrial and celestial forms." Lenormant, Beginnings of History, p.
549. Compare Louis de Ronchaud, " Le Peplos d' Athene Parthe-
ws," Revue Archeologique. Annee, xxiii. (1872) pp. 245 seq., 309^^.,
390 seq. ; xxiv. 80 seq. Also W. Svvartz, " Das Halsband cler Har
monia und die Krone der Ariadne." Neue JahrbUcher der Philologie,
1883 : pp. 115-127. This writer's view of the connection of the Hals-
band with the foot of the Yggdrasil is very curious and not wholly
clear.
2 Religions de la Grhe Antique, iii. 253.
8 Bimdahishy xxvii. 4. Compare the Vendiddd, Farg. xx.
268 PARADISE FOUND.
as the animals, with grain of fifty ana five species
and twelve species of medicinal plants, have arisen
from the primeval ox, so ten thousand species among
the species of principal plants, and a hundred thou
sand species among ordinary plants, have grown
from all these seeds of the tree opposed to harm,
the many-seeded. . . . When the seeds of all these
plants, with those from the primeval ox, have arisen
upon it, every year the bird (Kamros) strips that
tree and mingles all the seeds in the water ; Tishtar
seizes them with the rain-water and rains them on
to all regions." x
Where stood this tree which, in its dual form, was
at once the source of all other trees and the giver
of immortality ? Every indication points us to the
northern Pole. It was in Airan-Vej,2 the Persian
Eden, and this we have already found. It was at
the source of all waters, the north polar fountain
of Ardvi-Sura.3 It was begirt with the starry girdle
of the zodiacal constellations, which identifies it with
the axis of the world.4 It grew on uthe highest
height of Hara-berezaiti," 5 and this is the celestial
mountain at the Pole. Finally, although Grill mis-
1 Ibid., xxvii. 2, 3.
2 Bundahish, xxix. 5.
3 Ibid., xxvii. 4. Compare Windischmann : " Also der Baum des
Lebens wachst in dem Wasser des Lebens, in der Quelle Ardvigura
Anahita." Zoroastrische Studien. Berlin, 1863 : p. 171.
4 Homa Yasht, 26. Haug, Essays, 2d ed., p. 182.
5 Yasht, IX. (Gosh.), 17. Compare Bundahisk,xvm., as translated
by Justi and Windischmann. See Grill, Die Erzvater, i., pp. 186-
191. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, p. 165 seq. Spiegel,
Er&nisckc Alterthumskunde, i. 463 seq. It is by no means inconsis
tent herewith that, according to the Minokhired, the tree grows in the
sea Var-Kash " am verborgensten Orte," since this statement has ref
erence to the subterranean rooting of the tree in the lowest part of the
Underworld. Kuhn, Herabkunft, p. 124.
THE CENTRAL TREE. 269
takenly makes the Chinvat bridge " correspond with
the Milky Way and the rainbow," he nevertheless
correctly discerns some relationship between Chin-
vat and the Persian Tree of Life.1 By this identi
fication we are again brought to the one unmistak
able location toward which all lines of evidence
perpetually converge.
The Aryans of India, as early as in the far-off
Vedic age, had also their World-tree, which yielded
the gods their soma, the drink which maintains im
mortality. As we should anticipate, its roots are in
the Underworld of Yama at the hidden pole, its top
in the north polar heaven of the gods, its body is the
sustaining axis of the universe.2 Weber long ago
expressly identified it with the World-ash of the
Edda ; 3 and Kuhn,4 Senart,5 and all the more recent
writers accept without question the identification.
Grill's interesting sketch of the historic develop
ments of the myth may be seen in the Appendix to
this volume.6 Some of the late traces of it in Hindu
1 Grill, Ibid., p. 191. Compare the original Zend invocation in the
Homa Yasht : " Amereza gayeh$ stdna" "O imperishable Pillar of
Life" Haug, Essays, p. 177 n.
2 Rig Veda, x. 135, i ; Atharvan Veda, vi. 95, 1. See Kuhn, Herab-
kunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks. Berlin, 1859: p. 126 seg. J.
Grill, Erzvater, i., pp. 169-175. Obry, Le Berceau de FEsphe Hu-
niaine, pp. 146-160. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, pp. 176,
177. It is true that the roots of this divine Afvattha are sometimes
represented as in the heaven of the gods, its growth being downwards ;
but this is only to symbolize the emanation of Nature and of Nature's
life from the divine source, as clearly expressed in the opening verses
of the fifteenth reading of the Bhagavad Glta. See John Davies'
translation, London, 1882, p. 150 ; and for a parallel, M. Wolff, Mu-
bammedanische Eschatologie, Leipsic, 1872, p. 197.
8 Indische Studien, Bd. i., p. 397.
* Herabkunft,z\.z., p. 128.
5 La Legende du Bouddha, p. 240.
6 See APPENDIX, Sect. V.
2/0 PARADISE FOUND.
art betray the ancient conception of the Pole as a
means of ascent to heaven, a bridge of souls and
of the gods, a stair substituted for the slippery pil
lar up which the Tauist emperor vainly sought to
climb.1
Among the Greeks 2 it is more than probable that
the " holy palm " in Delos, on which Leto laid hold
at the birth of Apollo, represents the same mythical
World-tree. If so, and if we follow Hecataeus in
locating the scene, we shall be brought to the Arc
tic Pole.3 The eternally flourishing olive of Athene
(Euripides, Ion 1433) seems also but another form
of the holy palm, and this in some of its descrip
tions brings us again to the land of the Hyperbo-
1 " In the Naga sculptures (Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship,
pi. 27), the Tree of the Mount or Pole is identified at the bottom by
one tree, and at the top by another, and between the two there is a
kind of ladder, with a series of steps or stairs which ascend the tree,
in the place of a stem. These denote the Tree of the Ascent, Mount,
or Height, now to be considered as representing the Pole." — G. Mas-
sey, The Natural Genesis, vol. i., p. 354.
2 Kuhn, Herabkunft, etc., pp. 133-137.
8 Menzel, Unsterblichkeitslehre, i. 89. Its " central " position with
respect to the world of men is recognized by old Robert Burton in
his Anatomy of Melancholy, New York, 1849, P- 292- Compare
Massey : " The Tree of the Pole is extant in Celebes, where the na
tives believe that the world is supported by the Hog, and that earth
quakes are caused when the Hog rubs itself against the Tree. . . .
At Ephesus they showed the Olive and Cypress Grove of Leto, and
in it the Tree of Life to which the Great Mother clung in bringing
forth her twin progeny. There also was the Mount on which Hermes
announced the birth of her twins Diana and Apollo [sun and moon].
The imagery is at root the same as the Hog rubbing against the Tree
of the Pole." The Natural Genesis, vol. i., p. 354. And again, the
cosmical imagery of Hesiod : " Das leitende Bild eines Baumes, des-
sen Stamm sich von den Wurzeln erhebt und oben ausbreitet, tritt in
den Worten der Theogonie v. 727 : vom Tartarus aufwarts seien die
Wurzeln der Erde und des Meeres, deutlich hervor." W. F. Rinck,
Die Religion der Hellenen. Zurich, 1853 : Bd. i., p. 60.
THE CENTRAL TREE. 2JI
reans.1 In the Garden of the Hesperides, the tree
which bore the golden apples was unquestionably
the Tree of Paradise ; but following ^Eschylus, Pher-
ecydes, and Apollodorus, we must place it in the
farthest North, beyond the Rhipaean mountains.2
Traces of the same mythical conception among the
Romans are presented by Kuhn.3
The sacred tree of the Buddhists figures largely
in their sculpture. An elaborate specimen repre
sentation may be seen on the well-known Sanchi
Tope. One inconspicuous feature in the representa
tion has often puzzled observers. Almost invariably,
at the very top of the tree we find a little umbrella.
So universal is this that its absence occasions re
mark.4 This little piece of symbolism has a curious
value. In Buddhist mythological art the umbrella
symbolizes the north polar heaven of the gods,5 and
by attaching it to the tip of the sacred tree the an
cient sculptors of this faith unmistakably showed
the cosmical character and axial position of that to
which it was attached.
But this cosmic tree was the mythical B6dhi tree,
the Tree of Wisdom, -
" Beneath whose leaves
It was ordained that Truth should come to Buddh." 6
1 Nonnus, Dionysiac, xl. 443 seq. Liiken, Traditionen, p. 74.
2 Preller, Gr. Mythologie, i. 149. Volcker, Mythische Geographie.
Leipsic, 1832 : p. 134.
8 Herabkunfty etc., pp. 179, 180.
4 James Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship. London, 2d ed.,
1873: pp. 134, 135.
5 Lillie, Buddha and Early Buddhism. London, 1881 : pp. 2, 19.
A different study of the cosmical nature of this tree may be found in
Senart, Llgende du Bouddha. Paris, 1875 : PP* 239~244-
6 Arnold, Light of Asia, Book vi.
272 PARADISE FOUND.
Its location is in " the Middle of the Earth." l Not
withstanding his doctrine of an African origin of
mankind, Gerald Massey says, " In the legendary
life of Gautama, Buddha is described as having to
pass over the celestial water to reach Nirvana, which
is the land of the Bodhi Tree of Life and Knowl
edge. He was unable to cross from one bank to the
other, but the spirit of the Bodhi tree stretched out
its arms to him and helped him over in safety. By
aid of this tree he attained the summit of wisdom
and immortal life. It is the same Tree of the Pole
and of Paradise all mythology through. The Tree of
the Guarani garden, the Hebrew Eden, the Hindu
Jambu-dwipa, is likewise the Tree of Nirvana. This
final application of the imagery proves its origin.
The realm of rest was first seen at the polar centre
of the revolving stars." 2
The ancient Germans called their World-tree the
Irmensul, i. e., " Heaven-pillar." Grimm speaks of
its close relationship with the Norse Yggdrasil, and
1 " The Buddhists assert that this tree marks the middle of the
earth." — E. C. Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles. Philadelphia, 1884:
P- 3H-
'2 The Natural Genesis, vol. ii., 90. On the independence of the
Buddhist cosmogony and cosmology Beal remarks, " But whilst we
may regard Buddhism in the light of a reformation of the popular
belief in India, we must bear in mind that the stream of tradition
which reappears in its teaching, and may be traced in its books, is in
dependent and probably distinct from the Brahmanical traditions
embodied in the Puranas and elsewhere. At any rate, this is the case
so far as the primitive question of creation and of the cosmic system
generally is concerned. Mr. Rhys Davids has already remarked that
' the Buddhist archangel or god Brahma is different from anything
known to the Brahmans, and is part of an altogether different system
of thought ' (Bitddhist Suttas, p. 168 n.). I am inclined to go further
than this, and say that the traditions of the Buddhists are different
from those of the Brahmans in almost every respect." Samuel Beal,
Buddhist Literature in China. London, 1882 : p. 146.
THE CENTRAL TREE. 2/3
lends his high authority to the view that it was sim
ply a mythical expression of the idea of the world's
axis.1 The same view was advanced still earlier
by the distinguished Icelandic mythographer, Finn
Magnusen.2 How profoundly the myth affected me
diaeval Christian art is illustrated in many places,
among the rest in the sculptures on the south portal
of the Baptistery at Parma.3 It is also not without
a deep significance that "in the mediaeval legend of
Seth's visit to the Garden of Eden, to obtain for his
dying father the Oil of Compassion, the Tree of Life
which he saw lifted its top to heaven and sent its
root to hell; " 4 and that on the crucifixion cf Christ,
himself the
" Arbor, qu<z ab initio posita est,"
this cosmical Tree of the Garden died, and became
the " Arbre Sec" of mediaeval story.6
1 " Mir scheint auch die im deutschen Alterthum tief gegriindete
Vorstellung von der Irmensdule, jener altissima, universalis columna
quasi sustinens omnia, dem Weltbaum Yggdrasil nah verwandt." —
J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 759. Compare pp. 104-107.
2 Den aellre Edda. Kjobenhavn, 1822 : Bd. ii., 61. Compare the
following : " Yggdrasil has never been satisfactorily explained. But
at all events the sacred tree of the North is, no doubt, identical with
the ' robur Jovis? or sacred oak of Geismar, destroyed by Boniface,
and the Irminsul of the Saxons, the columna universalis, the terres
trial tree of offerings, an emblem of the whole world as far as it is
under divine influence." Thorpe, Northern Mythology ', vol. i., p. 155.
8 See F. Piper, Evangelischer Kalender fur 1866, pp. 35-80 (illus
trated). Also Piper's " Baum des Lebens," in the same Kalender for
1863, pp. 17-94.
4 Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology. London, 1872 : vol. ii., p.
411, note.
6 The Book of Marco Polo. Edition of Col. H. Yule. London,
1871 : pp. 120-131. Notice particularly the picture on p. 127, which
corrects Polo's blunder in confounding the Arbre Sol with the Arbre
Sec, The bird at the top of the central and highest of the trees de
picted conclusively identifies it with the World- tree of universal Ar
yan tradition. On this bird see Kuhn.
274 PARADISE FOUND.
The Paradise-tree of the Chinese Tauists is also
a World-tree. It is found in the centre of the en
chanting Garden of the Gods on the summit of the
polar Kwen-lun. Its name is Tong, and its location
is further denned by the expression that it grows
"hard by the closed Gate of Heaven." l As in many
of the ancient religions, the mount on which, after
the Flood, the ark rested was considered the same
as that from which in the beginning the first man
came forth, it is not strange to find the tree on the
top of the mountain of Paradise remembered in
some of the legends of the Deluge. In the Tauist
legend it seems to take the place of the ark. Thus
we are told that " one extraordinary antediluvian
saved his life by climbing up a mountain, and there
and then, in the manner of birds plaiting a nest, he
passed his days on a tree, whilst all the country be
low him was one sheet of water. He afterwards
lived to a very old age, and could testify to his late
posterity that a whole race of human beings had
been swept from the face of the earth." 2
It is at least suggestive to find this same idea of
salvation from a universal deluge by means of a mi
raculous tree growing on the top of the divine
Mountain of the North among the Navajo Indians
of our own country. Speaking of the men of the
world before our own, and of the warning they had
received of the approaching flood, their legends go
on : " Then they took soil from all the four corner
mountains of the world, and placed it on top of the
mountain that stood in the North ; and thither they
all went, including the people of the mountains,
1 Liiken, Traditionen, p. 72.
2 The Chinese Repository, vol. viii., p. 517.
THE CENTRAL TREE. 2?$
the salt-woman, and such animals as then lived in
the third world. When the soil was laid on the
mountain, the latter began to grow higher and
higher, but the waters continued to rise, and the
people climbed upwards to escape the flood. At
length the mountain ceased to grow, and they
planted on the summit a great reed, into the hol
low of which they all entered. The reed grew every
night, but did not grow in the daytime; and this
is the reason why the reed grows in joints to this
day : the hollow internodes show where it grew by
night, and the solid nodes show where it rested by
day. Thus the waters gained on them in the day
time. The turkey was the last to take refuge in the
reed, and he was therefore at the bottom. When
the waters rose high enough to wet the turkey, they
all knew that danger was near. Often did the waves
wash the end of his tail, and it is for this reason
that the tips of the turkey's tail-feathers are to this
day lighter than the rest of his plumage. At the
end of the fourth night from the time it was planted
the reed had grown up to the floor of the fourth
world, and here they found a hole through which
they passed to the surface." 1
The opening sentence of the above citation gives
us a topography exactly corresponding to Mount
Meru, the Hindu " mountain of the North," with its
" four corner mountains of the world," in the four
opposite points of the horizon. Moreover, in the
Deluge myths of the Hindus, as in this of the Nava-
1 W. Matthews, " The Navajo Mythology." The Am. Antiquarian,
July, 1883, p. 208. The difficulty of any interpretation of this cos
mology other than the true is illustrated by the efforts of M. Reville.
Les Religions des Peuples Non-civilis6s. Paris, 1883 : vol. i., pp. 271-
274.
2/6 PARADISE FOUND.
jos, it was over this central mountain that the sur<
vivors of that world-destruction found deliverance.
However explained, the coincidences are remark
able.
In Keltic tradition the Tree of Paradise is repre
sented by the tree which bore golden apples in
Avalon. But Avalon is always represented as an
island in the far North, and its " loadstone castle "
self-evidently connects it with the region of the mag
netic Pole.1
In the ancient epic of the Finns, the Kalevala, we
see the World-tree of another people. If any doubt
could rise as to its position in the universe, the con
stellation of the Great Bear in its top would suffice
to remove it.2
1 Menzel, Unsterblichkeitslehre, i. 87, 95 ; ii. 10. Keary, Outlines
of Primitive Belief, p. 453. Especially see Humboldt's references to
" Monte Calamitico" the mediaeval magnetic mountain in the sea to
the north of Greenland. Cosmos (Bohn's ed.), ii. 659 ; v. 55. Also,
Le Cycle mythologique irlandais et la Mythologie celtique. Par H. d'Ar-
bois de Jubainville. Paris, 1884. Dr. Carl Schroeder, Sanct Bran-
dan. Erlangen, 1871 : pp. 57, in, 167, etc.
2 The German translation by Anton Schiefner. Helsinfors, 1852 :
Rune x., 31-42. Compare Schiefner, Heldensagen der minussinischen
Tataren, p. 62 seq. Traces of the same myth are found among the
Samoans (Samoa a Hundred Years Ago and Long Before. By George
Turner, LL. D. London, 1884 : pp. 199, 201). Also, among the
Ugrian tribes (Peschel, Races of Man, p. 406) ; and among many of
the tribes of the American aborigines, and in Polynesia. See M.
Husson, La Chaine Traditionnelle, Contes et Legendes au point de vue
mythique. Paris, 1874 : especially pp. 140-160. Massey, The Natural
Genesis. "It was at the top of the Tree of Heaven — the Pole —
that the Guaranis were to meet once more with their Adam, Atum,
Turn, or Tamoi, who was to help them from thence in their ascent to
the higher life. Here the Tree of Life becomes a tree of the dead to
raise them into heaven. So in the Algonkin myth the tree of the dead
was a sort of oscillating log for the deceased to cross the river by, as
a bridge of the abyss, beyond which the Dog, as in the Persian mythos,
stands waiting for the souls of the dead, just as the Dog stands at
THE CENTRAL TREE. 2/7
Thus the sacred trees, like the sacred waters, of
every ancient people invariably conduct the inves
tigator to lands outside the historic habitats of the
peoples in question, and ever to one and the same
primeval home-country, the land of light and glory
at the Arctic Pole.1
the Northern Pole of the Egyptian, and is depicted in the tree of the
Southern Solstice, — the Tree of the Pole which was extended to the
four quarters." Vol. i., p. 404.
1 Since completing the foregoing chapter I have seen the work en
titled Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics ; embracing the Myths, Tradi
tions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore of the Plant Kingdom. By Richard
Folkard, Jun. London, 1884. In the first three chapters the reader
will find valuable supplementary reading on " The World-Trees of the
Ancients," "The Trees of Paradise," "The Tree of Adam," " Sa
cred Trees of all Nations," etc. Other chapters treat of " Plant Sym
bolism," " Plant Language," and of the fabulous trees and miracle
plants which play so important a part in the history of religious and
scientific credulity. Should any reader thereof be inclined to claim
that " the progress of science " has forever done away with such igno
rant mediaeval mystagogy, he will do well to turn to The Weekly Inter-
Ocean, Chicago, Dec. n, 1884, in which, in an illustrated article enti
tled " The Tree of Life," we are informed that " science has now dis
covered in a most unexpected manner both the Tree and the River
of Life." The former is the brain and spinal cord of man. " We do
not mean that the brain merely looks like a tree or resembles one ex
ternally. We are not dealing with analogies. But we do mean that
the brain and spinal cord are an actual tree. By the most rigid scien
tific examination it is shown to fill the ideal type and plan of a tree
more completely than any tree of the vegetable kingdom. The spinal
cord is the trunk of this great tree. Its roots are the nerves of feel
ing and motion branching out over the body. . . . The Tree of Life
is planted in the midst of many others, for the heart is a tree, the
lungs are a tree, and the pancreas, stomach, liver, and all those vital
organs. The brain is its radiant and graceful foliage. The mental
faculties are classified in twelve groups by the most recent scientific
analysis. This Tree bears twelve kinds of fruit. . . . On each side
of the Tree of Life is the great River of Life. Let us lay a man
down with his head to the north, and his arms stretched to the west
and to the east. The River of Life has its four heads in the four
chambers of the heart, the two auricles and the two ventricles. The
branches of this river pass upward to the head, ' the land of gold,'
278 PARADISE FOUND.
eastward to the left and westward to the right arm and lung. But
greatest of all the branches, ' The River, or Phrath,' are the aorta
and vena cava, reaching southward to the trunk and lower limbs. In
branching over the body this river divides into four parts at seven
teen different points. Two branches of the river form a network
around the very trunk of the tree, and spread upward among its ex
panding branches. The blood is the ' Water of Life,' and it looks
' as clear as crystal ' when seen through the microscope, the eye of
science. It is three fourths water, and through this are diffused the
red cells and the living materials which are to construct and to main
tain the bodily organs." Had this article and its antique-looking illus-
tration been found in one of the Church fathers, it would have af
forded to a certain class of " scientists " great edification.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE.
And the Lord God planted a garden. And out of the ground made the Lord-
God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. — The
Book of Genesis.
Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island ; and there was
provision for animals of every kind. Also whatever fragrant things there are
in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or distilling drops of flowers or
fruits, grew and thrived in that land. — The Critias of Plato.
Wie verkehrt man ilberhaupt geht, wenn man lediglich aus dem Kreise unsrer
jetzigen Erfahrung die Urwelt construiren will, haben uns die paldontologischen
Entdeckutigen der neuern Zeit gelehrt, die eben in der Urwelt uns die riesen-
haftesten und wunderbarsten Thiergestalten vorfiihren. — DR. H. LUKEN.
ACCORDING to all ancient traditions and beliefs,
the cradle of the human race was in a portion of the
world characterized by an altogether extraordinary
exuberance of life. Of all lands the sun shone upon
it was the fairest and best. Even down to the Del
uge, and later, something of the divine goodness of
that primeval home-land remained. In the eyes of
Plato, the steady deterioration has been going on
from the beginning, the good soil washing down
from the heavenly mountains of the earth's summit
and disappearing in the abyss, until, " in comparison
with what then was, there are remaining only the
bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, —
all the richer and softer parts of the soil having
fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being
left." J
1 Critias, III.
28O PARADISE FOUND.
The deterioration of the climate of the mother-
region of the race is particularly described in the
first Fargard of the Avesta : " The first of the good
lands and countries which I, Ahura Mazda, created
was the Airyana Vaejo [Airan Vej, " Iran the An
cient "] by the good river Daitya. Thereupon came
Angra Mainyu [Ahriman], who is all death, and he
counter-created by his witchcraft the serpent in the
river, and winter, a work of the daevas. There are
[now] ten winter months there, two summer months,
and these are cold for the waters, cold for the earth,
and cold for the trees." l So in Fargard second we
have a legendary account of the successive migra
tions of the earliest remembered men out of the
original North country " southwards, to meet the
sun," and nearly all commentators ascribe these
repeated " southward " movements to the gradual
refrigeration and glaciation of the primitive home in
" Iran the Ancient." 2
The same idea of a perfect primeval climate is
found among all ancient peoples. Ovid represents
1 Darmesteter, i., p. 8. Haug, p. 227. It will be observed that
the winter and summer here described are the exact counterpart or
"counter-creation" of the original polar day (the growing season) of
ten months, and the original polar night (or winter of rest from
growth) of two months. This is another incidental evidence that
" Iran the Ancient " was situate at the Pole.
2 " Or 1'avenement de la periode glaciaire pourrait seule expliquer
un tel fait, car on ne connait aucune autre cause capable de rendre in
habitable, a cause de froid, une contree qui est represented comme
ayant etc a 1'origine un pays d'excellente nature. On serait done
obligee d'en inferer que les firaniens avestiques avaient conserve, non
seulement le souvenir de la periode glaciaire, mais aussi celui des
beaux jours qui 1'ont precedee, et c'est ce qu'en general on n'admittra
pas facilement. L'age d'or primitif n'est pas un souvenir traditionnel
des temps preglaciaires," etc. Pietrement, Les Aryas et leur Premiere
Patrie. Paris, 1879 : p. 15. How near the truth !
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 281
the spring, in Saturn's reign, to have been peren
nial. The spring of our world-age is only an ab
breviated reminder of that great original.1 So Lac-
tantius has preserved a fragment of the old ethnic
creed when he tells us that only upon the loss of
Paradise, darkness and winter came over the earth.2
With this supposed deterioration of soil and cli
mate the deterioration of man kept pace. Hence
ancient writers, with hardly an exception, represent
the men of their own day as far inferior in stature,
in strength, and in longevity to the first progenitors
of the race. Hesiod, Aratus, Ovid, Vergil, and Clau-
dian vary somewhat in their accounts of the Golden,
Silver, and later ages of human history, but all
agree in representing the men of their time as weak
and puny and short-lived, compared with men of the
early ages of the world. Juvenal, in a well-known
passage, alludes to Homer's judgment, and expresses
his own : —
" Nam genus hoc vivo jam decrescebat Homero,
Terra malos homines mine educat atque pusillos." 8
Plato, speaking of the antediluvians, says, "For
many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted
in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well
affectioned toward the gods who were their kins
men ; for they possessed true and in every way great
spirits, practicing gentleness and wisdom in the
various chances of life and in their intercourse with
one another. ... By such reflections, and by the
continuance in them of the divine nature, all that
1 Metamorphoses, i. 113.
2 Placidus, 4.
8 Satires, xv. 69, 70. Compare Homer, Iliad, v. 302 et seq. ; Ver
gil, jEneid, xii. 900 ; Lucret., ii. 1151.
282 PARADISE FOUND.
we have described waxed and increased in them ;
but when this divine portion began to fade away in
them, and became diluted too often, and with too
much of the mortal admixture, and the human na
ture got the upper hand, they, being unable to bear
their fortune, became unseemly, and to him who had
an eye to see they began to appear base, and had
lost the fairest of their precious gifts." 1
The ancient Indian conception of the world's de
cadence from period to period is given in the " Laws
of Manu."2 Of the four great ages of the life of
the present universe, we are living in the last and
worst. In the first yuga all men were holy ; in the
present all are utterly corrupt and vile. In the first
they were tall and long-lived ; in each succeeding
age they have grown dwarfed and feeble.
Similar to the Indian was the Iranian belief as
reflected in the Bundahish. Here the duration of
the universe is represented as filling four world-
periods of three thousand years each. During the
first of the four all is pure and sinless, but at its
close the Evil One declares war against Ahura
Mazda, the holy God, which war is destined to fill
the three last ages. During the first of the three,
the Evil One is unsuccessful; during the second,
good and evil are exactly balanced ; while in the
last, which is our own, evil obtains, and till the des
tined overthrow at the very end maintains su
premacy.3
The conception which we are noticing is as old as
it is universal. Berosus, reporting the earliest tra-
1 Critias, 120.
2 Laws of Manu, I. 68-86.
8 The Bundahish) chapters i., xxxi., xxxiv.
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 283
ditions of Chaldaea, represents the first men as of
extraordinary stature and strength, and as retaining
in lessening degree these characteristics until some
generations after the Flood.1 " Among the Egyp
tians," says Lenormant, " the terrestrial reign of the
god Ra, who inaugurated the existence of the world
and of human life, was a Golden Age, to which they
continually looked back with regret and envy : to
assert the superiority of anything above all that im
agination could set forth, it was sufficient to affirm
that * its like had never been seen since the days of
the god Ra.' The same idea is found again in the
Egyptian account of the succession of the terres
trial reigns of the gods, the demi-gods, heroes, and
men, as collected from the fragments of Manetho,
and corroborated by the testimony of native texts." 2
In China, too, the catholic ethnic faith in a primeval
Golden Age was not lacking, so that everywhere
the eldest traditions — be they Shemitic, Aryan, or
Turanian — support, confirm, and illustrate the rep
resentations of the Bible touching the extraordinary
pristine vitality of Edenic nature and of antedilu
vian man. So overwhelming is the evidence that
this universal belief of antiquity is a reminiscence of
primitive reality, that one who expressly disclaims a
personal belief in the superior stature of the early
men nevertheless asserts that " the universality of
the popular belief attests its very ancient origin,"
and adds that "it may unhesitatingly be ranked
among those originating at a time when the great
civilized peoples of a remote antiquity, still cluster-
1 Fragments Cosmogoniques de B erase. Ed. Lenormant. Frag. 17.
2 Beginnings of History, pp. 67, 73, note. See the entire chapter
and the authorities there quoted. Also chapters vi. and vii., particu
larly pp. 35 i
284 PARADISE FOUND.
ing about the cradle of the race, enjoyed a contact
sufficiently close for some common traditions." 1
The bearing of this unanimous verdict of ancient
tradition upon the problem of the location of Eden
is obvious. The traditions of the whole ethnic
world, not less than the record in Genesis, require
that the cradle of the race be placed in the one spot
on earth where the biological conditions are the
most favorable possible. According to all procur
able data, that spot at the era of man's appearance
upon the stage was in the now lost " Miocene conti
nent," which then surrounded the Arctic Pole. That
in that true, original Eden some of the early gener
ations of men attained to a stature and longevity
unequaled in any countries known to postdiluvian
history is by no means scientifically incredible. On
the contrary, the exceptional biological conditions
of that land and the remarkable consensus of all
tradition respecting the vigor of early giant races
combine to form a fresh illustration of the principle
that the more incredible things an hypothesis ex
plains, the more irresistibly credible the hypothesis
itself becomes.
1 Lenormant, Beginnings of History, p. 354. The author con
tinues, " To-day we have scientific proof that such belief [in the ex
traordinary stature of the early men] has no real foundation, but is
simply a product of the imagination." But his alleged scientific
proof is purely negative, consisting of the fact that the human skele
tons which paleontologists have so far found — none of which are from
the high North — are only of ordinary size. " As far back as we can
trace the vestiges of mankind, up to the races who lived in the Qua
ternary period side by side with the great mammifers of extinct spe
cies, it may be proved that the medium height of our species has
never exceeded its existent limits." If other early species of mam
mifers were gigantic in comparison with their nearest living repre
sentatives of to-day, why may not the mammifer man have illustrated
the same law ?
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 285
Back in that far-off foretime, even in the lower
latitudes, life was remarkably luxuriant. The pale
ontologists almost exhaust the resources of language
in the effort to describe it. Thus, on a single page,
Professor Alleyne Nicholson, of St. Andrew's Uni
versity, says : " The life of the Miocene period is
extremely abundant, also extremely varied in its char
acter. . . . The marine beds have yielded numerous
remains of both vertebrate and invertebrate sea-ani
mals, . . . an enormous number of plants. . . . The
remains of air-breathing animals are also abundantly
found. . . . The plants of the Miocene period are
extraordinarily numerous. . . . The plant - remains
. . . indicate an extraordinarily rank and luxuriant
vegetation," etc.1 Figuier gives the following illus
tration : "The Lycopods of our age are humble
plants, scarcely a yard in height and most commonly
creepers ; but those of the ancient world were trees
of eighty or ninety feet in height." 2 But we have
before seen that the mother - region of all these
abounding and varied floral and faunal types was
within the Arctic Circle, and from their amazing ex
uberance in low latitudes we may form some concep
tion of the yet superior potencies of life which were
at work in that more highly favored circumpolar
seed-plot of the whole earth.
In our last chapter it was suggested that the Tree
in the midst of Paradise may have been as lofty as
one of the giant Sequoias of California. The com
parison was not made at random. In the Miocene
remains in Britain, conifers are especially numerous.
And " the most abundant of these is a gigantic pine,
1 Ancient Life-History of the Earth. New York ed., 1878 : p. 308.
2 The World before the Deluge, p. 134.
286 PARADISE FOUND.
the Sequoia Couttsicz, which is very nearly allied to
the huge Sequoia gigantea of California. A nearly
allied form, Sequoia Langsdorfii, has been detected
in the Hebrides." 1 From the latitude of the Se
quoia grove in Mariposa County, California, to that
of the Hebrides is a long stride toward the Pole ;
but we are not left to mere inference when we raise
the question whether the original starting-point of
this gigantic tree-species may not have been still
higher in the Arctic regions. The Miocene fossils
of the highest attainable Arctic latitudes tell their
own story. Limited as have been the explorations
among these fossils, as Sir Charles Lyell remarks,
" more than thirty species of Coniferae have been
found, including several Sequoias allied to the gigan
tic Wellingtonia of California. . . . There are also
beeches, oaks, planes, poplars, walnuts, limes, and
even a magnolia, two cones of which have lately
been obtained, proving that this splendid evergreen
not only lived, but ripened its fruit, within the Arc
tic Circle. Many of the limes, planes, and oaks
were large-leaved species, and both flowers and
fruits, besides immense quantities of leaves, are in
many cases preserved. . . . Even in Spitzbergen,
within 12° of the Pole, no less than ninety-five spe
cies of fossil plants have been obtained." The vigor
of the vegetable life of the Miocene age in these
Arctic regions impresses the veteran geologist as
" truly remarkable."
We have a right, then, not only to draw a conclu
sion from the "abundant" and " extraordinarily rank
and luxuriant vegetation" of the Arctic regions in
Miocene time, but also to learn a special lesson from
1 Nicholson, Life-History, p. 309.
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE.
the gigantic forms which linger on our Western
coast. Had the book of Genesis described one of
the trees of Eden as three hundred and twenty feet
in height and thirty feet in diameter at the base, not
only all the Voltaires of modern history, but also —
until the discovery of California — all naturalists of
the advanced anti-Christian variety, would have made
no end of sport over the unscientific or mythical
" Botany of Moses." But the Sequoia gigantea is a
living, indisputable fact. Though not the oldest of
the Coniferae, it illustrates some of the earlier possi
bilities of vegetable life. It tells the botanist that
growths once realized in great abundance are dying
out, and unless perpetuated by human care are soon
to disappear from our globe forever. Its last surviv
ing representatives in the state of nature, preserved
to our day by certain fortunate local conditions and
by their own inherent longevity, are witnesses re
specting a far-off world, — witnesses whose testimony
the most incredulous must accept. They tell of the
far-away dawn of the day of man, they bear testimony
to the extraordinary life which characterized their
distant birth-land.1 And if these last individuals of
an expiring race can maintain, under unfavorable
biological conditions, a vigorous life through two mil
lenniums of time, who shall declare it impossible that
1 During the Tertiary period the Sequoias "occurred all around
the Arctic zone " (Asa Gray). Professor J. D. Whitney finds evidence
that one of the fallen trees in Placer County was over 2000 years of
age. See his Yosemite Book ; also Engler, Entwickelungsgeschichte
der Pflanzenwelt. Leipsic, 1879-82 : chap. i. and ii. It is also note
worthy that the Australian Eucalyptus gigantea, the only tree which
surpasses the Sequoia in height, is found precisely in that country
whose belated living flora and fauna are more closely related to the
northern types of the early world than are any other.
288 PARADISE FOUND.
the men of the time and place of the origination of
the Sequoia gigantea should have averaged more
than six feet in stature, or attained to an age quite
surpassing our threescore years and ten ? As to the
latter point, it would require more than the com
bined lives of two Methuselahs to watch the growth
and death of a single tree like those of California.
The thought is not the incubation of the present
writer ; it is what the trees themselves said to the
foremost botanist of America.1
But the exuberance of animal life in the Miocene
period is not less remarkable. We quote the same
author as before : " The Invertebrate animals of
this period are very numerous. ... The little shells
of the Foraminifera are extremely abundant. . . .
Corals are very abundant, in many instances forming
regular reefs. . . . Numerous crabs and lobsters
represent the Crustacea. . . . Of Insects more than
thirteen hundred species have been determined by Dr.
Heer from the Miocene strata of Switzerland alone.
. . . The Mollusca are very numerous. . . . Polyzoans
1 " We cannot gaze high up the huge and venerable trunks, which
one crosses the continent to behold, without wishing that these patri
archs of the grove were able, like the long-lived antediluvians of
Scripture, to hand down to us through a few generations the tradi
tions of centuries, and so tell us somewhat of the history of their
race. Fifteen hundred annual layers have been counted or satisfac
torily made out upon one or two fallen trunks. It is probable that
close to the heart of some of the living trees may be found the circle
that records the year of the Saviour's nativity. A few generations of
such trees might carry the history a long way back. But the ground
they stand on and the marks of very recent geologic change and vi
cissitude in the region around testify that not very many such gener
ations can have flourished just here, at least in unbroken series." —
Professor Asa Gray, LL. D., " The Sequoia and its History." Pro
ceedings of the American Association for ike Advancement of Science,
1872, p. 6.
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 289
are abundant. Bivalves and Univalves are extremely
plentiful. . . . The Fishes of the period are very
abundant. . . . The remains of Reptiles are far
from uncommon. . . . The Land-tortoises make their
first appearance during this period. The most re
markable form of this group is the huge Colossochelys
Atlas of the Upper Miocene deposits of the Siwalik
Hills in India, described by Dr. Falconer and Sir
Proby Cautley. Far exceeding any living tortoise in
its dimensions, this enormous animal is estimated as
having had a length of about twenty feet, measured
from the tip of the snout to the extremity of the tail,
and to have stood upwards of seven feet. . . . The
accomplished paleontologists just quoted show fur
ther that some of the traditions of the Hindus would
render it not improbable that this colossal Tortoise
survived into the earlier portion of the human pe
riod. . . . The Mammals of the Miocene are very
numerous. . . . The Edentates (Sloths, etc.) are rep
resented by two large European forms. One of
these is the large Macrotheritim giganteum. . . . The
other is the still more gigantic Ancylotherium Pen-
telici, which seems to have been as large as, or larger
than, the rhinoceros. . . . We may also note here the
first appearance of true 'whalebone Whales,' two spe
cies of which, resembling the living ' Right Whale'
of the Arctic seas, and belonging to the same genus,
have been detected in the Miocene beds of North
America. . . . The great order of the Ungulates,
or hoofed quadrupeds, is very largely developed in
strata of the Miocene age, various new types mak
ing their appearance here for the first time. . . . We
meet for the first time with representatives of the
family Rhinocerida, comprising the only existing rhi-
19
2Cp PARADISE FOUND.
noceroses. . . . The family of the Tapirs is repre
sented, . . . some of which were quite diminutive in
point of size, whilst others attained the dimensions
of a horse. Nearly allied to this family, also, is the
singular group of quadrupeds which Marsh had de
scribed under the name of Brontotheridce. These
extraordinary animals, typified by Brontotherium
itself, agree with . . . and differ from the existing Ta
pirs. . . . Brontotherium gigas is said to be nearly
as large as an elephant, whilst Brontotherium ingens
appears to have attained dimensions still more gigan
tic. The well-known genus Titanotherium would
also appear to belong to this group. . . . The family
of the Horses appears under various forms in the
Miocene, but the most important and best known of
these is the Hipparion. . . . Remains of the Hippa-
rion have been found in various regions in Europe
and in India ; and from the immense quantities of
their bones found in certain localities, it may be safely
inferred that these Middle Tertiary ancestors of the
Horse lived, like their modern representatives, in
great herds. . . . Amongst the even-toed Ungulates
we for the first time meet with examples of the Hip
popotamus, with its four-toed feet, its massive body,
and huge tusk-like lower teeth. . . . The true Deer,
with their solid bony antlers, appear for the first time
here. . . . Perhaps the most remarkable of these
Miocene Ruminants is the Sivatherium gigantetim
of the Siwalik Hills in India. In this extraordinary
animal there were two pairs of horns. ... If all
these horns had been simple, there would have been
no difficulty in considering Sivatherium as simply a
gigantic four-horned Antelope. ... It is to the Mio
cene period that we must refer the first appearance
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 291
of the important order of the Elephants and their
allies (Proboscidians). . . . Only three generic groups
of this order are known, namely, the extinct Dei-
notherium, the equally extinct Mastodons, and the
Elephants ; and all these three types are known
to have been in existence as early as the Miocene
period, the first of them being exclusively con
fined to deposits of this age. . . . The most cel
ebrated skull of the Deinothere is the one which
was exhumed from the Upper Miocene deposits of
Epplesheim, in Hesse-Darmstadt, in the year 1836.
This skull was four and a half feet in length, and
indicated an animal larger than any existing species
of the Elephant. . . . Whilst herbivorous quadrupeds,
as we have seen, were extremely abundant during
Miocene times, and often attained gigantic dimen
sions, beasts of prey (Carnivora) were by no means
wanting ; most of the existing families of the order
being represented. . . . Weasels and Otters were
not unknown, . . . whilst the great Cats of subse
quent periods are more than adequately represented
by the huge ' sabre-toothed ' Tiger. . . . Amongst
the Rodent Mammals . . . all the principal living
groups were differentiated in Middle Tertiary times.
. . . Lastly, the Monkeys existed during the Mio
cene period under a variety of forms. . . . The
Dryopithecus is referable to the group of ' Anthro
poid Apes/ . . . Dryopithecus was also of large size,
equaling Man in stature, and apparently living
amongst the trees and feeding upon fruits."1
It would be easy to heighten the impression of
this vigor and luxuriance of animal life in Tertiary
and Post-tertiary times by studying the huge bird-
1 Nicholson, Life-History, pp. 311 et seq.
292 PARADISE FOUND.
tracks of the Connecticut sandstone, or the enor
mous skeletons of the Dinornis giganteus and the
Dinornis elephantopus, or the eggs of the ^Epiornis
maximus, — eggs " measuring from thirteen to four
teen inches in diameter." * We might consider the
Diprotodon, which " in size must "have many times
exceeded the dimensions of the largest of its living
successors, since the skull measures no less than
three feet in length." 2 Or we might rehabilitate
the " colossal " Megatherium Cuvieri, whose " thigh
bone is nearly thrice the thickness of the same bone
in the largest of existing Elephants." 3 Or, again,
visiting the Jurassic beds of our own Colorado, we
might contemplate the Titanosaurus, one of the
latest discovered of the tenants of the early world,
of which Sir John Lubbock says that it " is perhaps
the largest land animal yet known, being a hundred
feet in lengthy and at least thirty feet in height,
1 The fact that fossil remains of these gigantic extinct birds have
been found only in the Southern hemisphere militates in no wise
against the doctrine that the species originated in the highest North.
For (i) birds are the best equipped of all creatures for migration to
the remotest parts of the earth. (2.) The Connecticut Valley sand
stones, in the Northern hemisphere, preserve the tracks of birds
"which must have been of colossal dimensions," the tracks being 22
inches in length and 12 in breadth, with a proportionate length of
stride. " These measurements indicate a foot four times as large as
that of the African Ostrich." (3.) These tracks were made in the
Triassic period, while the remains found in New Zealand and adjacent
regions belong to the much more recent Post-pliocene period, thus
giving a long lapse of years for the spread or migration of the species
from the latitude of the Connecticut Valley to that of the most South
ern lands. Compare Geikie : " The higher fauna of Australia is more
nearly akin to that which flourished in Europe far back in Meso-
zoic time than to the living fauna of any other region of the globe."
Geology, p. 619.
2 Nicholson, Life- History, p. 349.
8 Ibid., p. 350.
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 293
though it seems possible that even these vast di
mensions may have been surpassed by those of the
Atlantosaurus" 1 also a late discovery. But why
multiply illustrations ? Natural history in our times
can produce no species of fishes, or of amphibians,
or of reptiles, or of birds, or — among mammals —
of marsupials, or of edentates, or of ungulates, or
of proboscidians, or of carnivores, or of apes, which
in normal dimensions are not excelled by species of
the corresponding orders and classes belonging to
Tertiary and Quaternary ages. And this being so,
it is surely possible and credible that in the same
antediluvian ages some of the varieties of the spe
cies Bimana may have exceeded in stature its pres
ent average, and enjoyed a corresponding vigor of
constitution. At any rate, it will be soon enough
to deny it after human remains of suitable age shall
have been found in the vicinity of the race's origin
and earlier history. So far as past findings are con
cerned, even Biichner, who holds that "primitive
man was inferior even in corporeal attributes to the
men of the present day," and that " the widely spread
belief in the former existence of a race of human
giants is perfectly erroneous," still has to say, " It
is true that some very ancient skeletons or parts of
skeletons have been found, which must have be
longed to comparatively large and very muscular
men, such, for example, as the skeleton of the famous
Neanderthal man, and the human bones recently
found by M. Louis Lartet in one of the caverns of
Perigord, . . . which seem to indicate a rude but
muscular race of men." 2 Again, speaking of the
1 Nature. London, 1881 : p. 406.
2 Man in the Past, Present, and Future. Eng. tr. by Dallas, pp.
90.SI-
294 PARADISE FOUND.
skeleton to which the Neanderthal skull belongs, he
says, " The ridges and crests especially which served
as points for insertion of the muscles are very
strongly developed, so that we may conclude that
their possessor was a very strong and muscular
man!' J It may be added that Carl Vogt, one of the
earliest and most influential of Darwin's German
disciples, also conceived of " the man of the oldest
Stone Age " as "of large stature, powerful and long
headed!' *
Here it may be well to remark that the primitive
forms of animals, while often so excelling in size
the later forms of their own kind, are by no means
to be thought of as monstrosities. The proportion
of a young child's head to his body is very different
from that of an adult's. In comparison with the
grown man, his limbs and hands and feet are re
markably plump and well rounded. Had a painter
never seen and studied a human being except in the
adult and senescent stage, the infant form would
seem to him singularly abnormal. This illustration
may help to a right judgment of certain early types
of animals. For "if we take the earliest known
and oldest examples of any given group of animals,
it can sometimes be shown that these primitive
forms, though in themselves highly organized, pos
sessed certain characters such as are now only seen
in the young of their existing representatives. In
technical language, the early forms of life in some
instances possess ' embryonic ' characters, though
this does not prevent them often attaining a size
much more gigantic than their nearest living rela«
1 Man in the Past, Present, and Future, p. 53.
2 Ibid., pp. 60, 259.
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 29$
tives. Moreover, the ancient forms of life are often
what is called 'comprehensive types ;' that is to say,
they possess characters in combination such as we
nowadays only find separately developed in different
groups of animals. Now this permanent retention
of embryonic characters and this ' comprehensive
ness ' of structural type are signs of what a zoolo
gist considers to be a comparatively ' low ' grade of
organization ; and the prevalence of these features
in the earlier forms of animals is a very striking
phenomenon, though they are none the less perfectly
organized so far as their own type is concerned'' 1
To put the mistake to be guarded against in another
light, it may be said that whoever considers the de
partures of the most ancient forms of animal life
from the allied living forms as abnormal and mon
strous in many cases simply takes the types of de
cadence and senility by which to test and condemn
the plumper and fuller and fairer types of physical
juvenility. In like manner, the " comprehensive "
types can be called monstrous and strange only
as these terms might be applied to the " London
Times " by a man who in all his life had never seen
any other specimen of journalism than " The North
British Wool-Growers' Monthly Bulletin," or " The
Daily Price-Current of the Southampton Associated
Grocers." What the zoologist calls the "lowest"
forms of organization are rather the highest, if by
"highest " we mean those forms which are most in-
o
elusive, lebenskrdftig, and susceptible of evolutionary
differentiation.2 The notion that the faunal world at
1 Nicholson, Life-History, pp. 60, 61. Compare pp. 367-374.
2 " The first appearance of leading types of life are rarely embry
onic. On the contrary, they often appear in highly perfect and spe
cialized forms ; often, however, of composite type, and expressing
296 PARADISE FOUND.
the time of the advent of man was a world of crudi
ties and monstrosities — a notion to which books
and magazines of popularized science have given an
almost universal currency — is therefore entirely
false.1 In the light of profounder science, the fair
est Eden of the oldest legend is, so far as primeval
zoology is concerned, more credible than when the
study of Paleontology was first begun.
It must not be forgotten that in all that has now
been hinted respecting the fauna of the early world
no account has been taken of more favorable and
less favorable portions of the earth. Paleontologists
are but just beginning to consider that between the
biological conditions of the Arctic regions and those
of every other portion of the globe there must have
been, in Pre-Glacial times, the profoundest and most
far-reaching difference. The growths of a region
whose day was ten months in length, and whose
night was but two, could not fail to be vastly differ-
characters afterwards so separated as to belong to higher groups. . . .
The bald and contemptuous negation of these facts by Haeckel and
other biologists does not tend to give geologists much confidence in
their dicta." — Principal J. W. Dawson, in his " Presidential Address
before the American Association for the Advancement of Science."
Science, Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 17, 1883 : p. 195.
1 " Dr. Hooker observes, in his recent introductory essay on the
Flora of Australia, that it is impossible to establish a parallel between
the successive appearances of vegetable forms in time and their com
plexity of structure or specialization of organs as represented by the
successively higher groups in the natural method of classification.
He also adds that the earliest recognizable cryptograms are not only
the highest now existing, but have more highly differentiated vegeta
tive organs than any subsequently appearing, and that the dicotyledo
nous embryo and perfect exogenous wood, with the highest special
ized tissue known (the coniferous with glandular tissue), preceded
the monocotyledonous embryo and endogenous wood in date of ap
pearance on the globe, — facts wholly opposed to the doctrine of pro
gression." — Sir Charles Lyell, The Antiquity of Man, p. 404.
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 297
ent from those of the regions where, on the average,
almost twelve hours of every twenty-four are spent
in darkness. " Nor can we overlook the fact that
the plants and shells of the Arctic region are emi
nently variable." l If, therefore, in low latitudes the
forms and powers of animal life were what we have
seen, who can undertake to depict its superior exu
berance and variety of manifestation in that primitive
polar focus from which all faunal types proceeded ! 2
The Arctic rocks tell of a more wonderful lost
Atlantis than Plato's. The fossil ivory beds of Si
beria excel everything of the kind in the world.
From the days of Pliny, at least, they have con
stantly been undergoing exploitation, and still they
are the chief headquarters of supply.3 The remains
1 Charles Darwin, Animals and Plants tinder Domestication. New
York, 1868 : ii. 309.
2 This " eminent " variableness of Arctic life has its bearing upon
the scientific credibility of prehistoric Arctic giants. At the present
day, and in our own latitudes, men occasionally appear whose stature
is four or five times the height of the smallest adult dwarfs. Accord
ingly, if we were to assume two and one half feet as the minimum
adult stature in polar regions in primeval times, the still prevailing
range of variation would give us in those times some men from seven
and one half to twelve and one half feet in height. Possibly new fos
sil evidence on this point is soon to be afforded us. The following is
going the rounds of the daily press : " A Carson (Nev.) dispatch says,
The footprints which were so much discussed in this country and
Europe, and which were originally pronounced by Dr. Harkness, of
the Academy of Sciences, to be those of mammoths, are now stated
by him, after a year's examination, to be only those of big-footed
men." See Proceedings of the California Academy of Science, 1882
(Aug. 7 and 27, Sept. 4, Oct. 2). Nadaillac, in Materiaux pour rHis-
toire primitive et naturellc de V Homme. Paris, 1882: pp. 313-321.
Topinard, in Revue d ' Anthropologie. Paris, 1883 : pp. 309-320. Also
Mr. Cope, in The American Naturalist, Philadelphia, 1883.
8 Von Middendorff (Reise im Norden und Ostcn Siberiens, 1848)
reckons the number of the tusks which now annually come into the
market as at least a hundred pairs, on which Nordenskjold remarks :
298 PARADISE FOUND.
of the mammoth are so abundant that, as Gratacap
says, " the northern islands of Siberia seem built
up of its crowded bones" * Another scientific writer,
speaking of the islands of New Siberia, northward
of the mouth of the river Lena, uses this language :
" Large quantities of ivory are dug out of the ground
every year. Indeed, some of the islands are believed
to be nothing but an accumulation of drift-timber and
the bodies of mammoths and other antediluvian ani
mals frozen together?' 2 So full of these remains is
the soil of these high Arctic regions that the Ost-
yaks and other ignorant tribes have an idea that the
mammoth is an underground animal ploughing his
way through the earth like a mole, and that he still
lives in his subterranean passages. Nor would there
seem to be anything so remarkably novel in the
theory we have advocated in this book, according
to which the submergence of the primeval home of
mankind and the introduction of the great Ice Age
are connected with the Deluge : for when, nearly
two hundred years ago, the Russian ambassador,
Evert Yssbrants Ides, made his bold, three -year
overland journey to China, he in the high North
found and reported this precise traditionary belief.3
" From this we may infer that during the years that have elapsed
since the Russian conquest of Siberia, useful tusks from more than
20,000 mammoths have been collected." In a note the same writer
expresses the opinion that Von Middendorff s estimate is quite too low,
and says that a single steamer on which he sailed up the Yenisej in
1875 was on that single trip taking more than one hundred tusks to
market. The Voyage of the Vega, p. 305.
1 " Prehistoric Man in Europe." The Am. Antiquarian and Oriental
"Journal. Chicago, 1881 : p. 284.
2 Johnsoris Cyclopadia, sub voce.
3 " The old Russians living in Siberia were of opinion that the mam
moth was an animal of the same kind as the elephant, and that before
the Flood Siberia had been warmer than now, and elephants had then
THE EXUBERANCE OF LIFE. 299
Summing up the present chapter, then, we have
only to say that whoever accepts the conclusion to
which the preceding lines of argument have con
ducted us will find no longer a stumbling-block in
the latest revelations of Geology touching the ex
traordinary life-energies of far-off ages, and in the
hoary myths which tell of giants and Titans and
demigods in Earth's early morning. On the con
trary, fossil form and ethnic myth and sacred page
will all be found uniting in a common story.
lived in numbers there ; that they had been drowned in the Flood,
and afterwards, when the climate became colder, had frozen in the
river mud." Nordenskjb'ld, Voyage of the Vega> p. 305.
CHAPTER VIII.
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT.
Now if Water be the Best, and Gold be the most precious ', so now to the farthest
bound doth Theron by his fair deeds attain, and front his own home touch the
Pillars of 'Heracles -1 Pathless the things beyond, pathless alike to the unwise and
the wise. Here will I search no more ; the quest were vain. — PINDAR (MYERS).
IN Part Second, at the very beginning of our dis
cussion, attention was called to the two classes of
tests which the hypothesis of an Arctic polar site
for Eden must of necessity meet : first, the tests
which would apply alike to all the ordinarily pro
posed sites in temperate and inter-tropical latitudes ;
and second, the tests which would be inseparable
from the aspects and adjustments of Nature at the
Pole. In the first class seven were enumerated, and
at the close of Part Fourth we saw how surpris
ingly and convincingly all of the seven had been
met. In the second class seven others were par
ticularized as " new features " introduced into the
problem of the site of Eden by the very nature of
our hypothesis. They were all of so peculiar and
extraordinary a character, and they so modified the
requirements to be made of all corroborative hu
man tradition, that nothing short of the truth of the
intrinsically improbable hypothesis could save it
1 " Atlas gave to Heracles the /c&r/uou niovas which contained all the
secrets of Nature." Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i., p. 505 n. Com
pare below, Part VI., ch. ii. Also Jonnes, UOcean, pp. 121, 107, et
passim.
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT. 301
from obvious and ridiculous failure at each succes
sive point. In the present Part we have now brought
together the facts, or at least a portion of the facts,
which go to demonstrate that the hypothesis of a
Polar Paradise, and no other, can meet and satisfy
each one of these new and more difficult require
ments. Speaking after the manner of the mathe
maticians, though of course with due remembrance
of the nature of the reasoning employed, it may be
said that we have first solved our problem, and then,
by a new process and with changed elements, proved
and verified our answer. Whoever would see how
strikingly complete and cogent this verifying pro
cess is should turn back to the second chapter of
Part Second and carefully collate the seven "new
features " there enumerated with the facts of the
first seven chapters of the present Part. The result
of such a collation upon any candid mind can hardly
be doubtful.
In the writer's firm-grounded conviction, then,
LOST EDEN is FOUND. To no one of his readers
can its true site be more surprising than it was at
first to him. Every antecedent probability seemed
in array against it. First of all, in such problems
every new hypothesis is inherently unlikely in di
rect proportion to the number of hypotheses pre
viously propounded and found wanting. Where
had more been advanced by the learned and ingen
ious than here ? Again, from its nature the hy
pothesis greatly aggravated the conditions and re
quirements of the problem itself. And if, during
centuries of discussion, no sublunary site had been
found which could meet the simple conditions of
Genesis, how unlikely that with new and far more
302 PARADISE FOUND.
extraordinary conditions added a place could be
found corresponding ! Again, in order to its verifi
cation, the hypothesis required that a wholly new in
terpretation of mankind's oldest cosmological ideas
and traditions should be propounded and verified, —
an interpretation unanimously forbidden by the con
sensus of modern scholarship in almost every de
partment of historical and archaeological research.
How supremely unlikely that any such undertaking
could be crowned with success !
Happily, human events do not fall out according
to our short-sighted human likelihoods. Even the
thoughtless man sees it, and exclaims, " It is always
the impossible that happens ! " The more reverent
soul, who discerns in all history a higher than hu
man agency, and in whose eyes Nature itself is
supernatural, must least of all be daunted by the
unpromising first appearances of any clue to truth.
His conceptions of the actual are larger than those
of mere believers in nature, and thereto are ad
justed his conceptions of the probable. Identifying
himself with that personal Power which everywhere
makes for truth no less than for righteousness, he
is ever expecting the otherwise unexpectable, and for
the same reason ever looking upon each new truth
attained, not as a personal achievement, but simply
as one more proof and precious pledge of pupilhood.
In the progress of the studies here summed up
many curious things have come to light, one of
which may appropriately be mentioned in this place.
Archaeologists are well aware that more than one
hundred years ago, in his " Lettres sur 1' Atlantide
de Platon," 1779, and "Lettres sur 1'Origine des
Sciences," 1777, the learned and ingenious Jean
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT. 303
Sylvain Bailly advocated the view that the primi
tive cradle of civilization was in Siberia, under the
49th or 5oth degree of latitude. In the latter of the
works named there occurs a noteworthy passage in
which the author, rhetorically fixing the birthplace
of mankind at the very Pole, remarks upon the "sin
gular conformity " of such a starting-point, both
with all the phenomena of civilization and with the
indications of mythology. In the same breath, how
ever, as if startled by his own temerity, he reas
sures his readers by announcing that his suggestion
is " only a philosophic fiction," and that it " lacks
the support of history." l Is it too much to say that
the support of history has now been furnished ? 2
Though our hypothesis needs no further confir
mation, it would be perfectly easy to develop a new
and striking line of evidence from the light which
it throws on the origin of the erroneous precon
ceptions which in the past have either perpetually
suggested false theories, or else occasioned the con
viction that the problem was insoluble. Thus, after
what we have learned as to the posture of wor
shipers in all ancient nations, it is easy to under-
1 " Au reste, si j'ai trace la marche de 1'homme ne sous le pole,
s'avan9ant vers 1'equateur, inventant toutes les differentes mesures
de 1'annee, par les circonstances physiques des differentes latitudes,
ce n'est qu'une fiction philosophique, singuliere par sa conformite
avec les phenomenes, remarquable par 1'explication des fables ; fic
tion qui surtout n'a rien d'absurde en elle-meme, et a laquelle il ne
manque que d'etre appuyee par 1'histoire : " pp. 255, 256.
2 Since the announcement of his results the writer has received
letters from three plain, unschooled Bible-students, who appear to
have anticipated, each in his own way, the conclusions of this book.
One of them, Mr. Alexander Skelton, a machinist and blacksmith, of
Paterson, N. J., obtained a hearing, it seems, in the New York Trib
une, in 1878, and his argument, though brief, is remarkably compre
hensive and cogent.
304 PARADISE FOUND.
stand that the primitive Garden " in the Front-
country " must have been in the North. But since
in the Post-Glacial ages this Front-country was
naturally associated with the East, and all investi
gators, Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan, were
trying to find some Oriental region of Paradisaic cli
mate, with a central Tree and a quadrifurcate River
by which the primitive Gan-Eden might be identi
fied, we have in this preliminary misconception rea
son enough for their failure age after age.
Again, in reviewing the results of the theologians,
we saw that not a few of the more modern had, like
Luther, been repelled and disgusted by the appar
ently senseless and contradictory representations of
the earlier fathers and church-teachers, in some of
which Paradise was placed in heaven, and yet appar
ently on earth, and anon perhaps midway between
heaven and earth ; as high, in fact, as the moon.
In view of such representations we cannot be sur
prised that a keen-witted satirist like Samuel Butler,
in enumerating the rare accomplishments of Hudi-
bras, should have said, —
" He knew the seat of Paradise,
Could tell in what degree it lies ;
And, as he was disposed, could prove it
Below the moon, or else above it."
Our study of the prehistoric Paradise-mountain,
standing upon the earth at the Arctic Pole and lift
ing its head " to the orbit of the moon," brings in
stant light into all this confusion. The mountain is
at once in heaven and on earth. And it is interest
ing to note that late mediaeval theologians, despite
their meagre opportunities for historical research,
traced this conception to just that apostle who, ao
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT. 305
cording to ecclesiastical tradition, as special " Apos
tle of India," had best opportunity to learn of the
East-Aryan Meru, and to report this peculiar and
venerable tradition of Paradise.1 Moreover, as we
have seen, there were in several Asiatic religions
two Paradises, a celestial and a terrestrial, con
nected by a pillar, or bridge, up and down which
holy souls could pass. When, therefore, an ancient
writer is found alluding in one place to Paradise as
on earth and in another to Paradise as in heaven,
the confusion is not in his own mind, but merely in
that of his reader.
Here, too, a good word can be put in for poor
Cosmas Indicopleustes, — the man who has had the
honor of being more ignorantly and contemptuously
abused by modern scientists than any other cos-
mographer of early Christian ages. Doubtless it is
easy to ridicule his rude representation of the uni
verse, but who will assure us that, thirteen or four
teen centuries hence, it may not be equally easy to
ridicule the speculations of Herschel as to the form
of the Cosmic Whole ? However this may be, the
foregoing chapters have given a new significance to
the thought of the monk " who sailed to India,"
showing us that his " Mountain " to the North of
the known countries of his day was none other than
Mount Meru, the legendary heaven-supporting cul
mination of the Northern hemisphere. His loca
tion of Eden, so far as the verdict of science is
yet rendered, is at least as well supported as Hackel's
1 " I have found it in some most ancient books that Thomas, the
Apostle, was the author of the opinion . . . that Paradise was so high
as to reach to the lunar circle." — Albertus Magnus, Summa Theologies,
Pars II., Tract, xiii., qu. 79.
20
306 PARADISE FOUND.
in lost "Lemuria," or Unger's in a mid-Atlantic
"Atlantis." Most remarkable of all, just NORTH
of the Arctic Ocean boundary of Europe — not in the
West, as sometimes falsely represented : — he lo
cates "the land where men dwelt before the Flood"*
If our conclusions are correct, Cosmas was the ear
liest known geographer who gave to the Christian
world a true account of the original seat of the post-
Edenic antediluvian world. Thus those who have
so long made him their pet illustration of the igno
rance and unscientific spirit of " Christian " teach
ing may yet see occasion to revise their judgment,
and to transform a portion of their ridicule into
praise.
The same principles which explain the strange
world of Cosmas explain also the strange conception
of the Earth which we found in the letters of Colum
bus. According to this latter, it will be remem
bered, the historic hemisphere was true to the
spherical figure, but the hemisphere of his far West
explorations rose to a lofty eminence at the equator,
in what he supposed to be Asia, but which after
wards proved to be the northern part of South
America. This gave to the Earth the figure shown
in the adjoining cut, — a figure which he compared to
that of a nearly round pear.3 At first view this con-
1 E. g., by Donnelly, Atlantis, p. 96.
2 " Terra ultra Oceanum ubi ante Diluvium habitabant homines."
Cosmas Indicopleustes. De Mundo, lib. iv. Montfaucon, Collectio
Nova, torn ii., Tabula i., opp. p. 188.
3 " It is probable that this idea really dates from the seventh cen
tury. We may read in several cosmographical manuscripts of that
epoch that the earth has the form of a cone or a top, its surface ris-
ing from south to north. These ideas were considerably spread by
the compilations of John of Beauvais in 1479, from whom, probably,
Columbus derived his notion." Flammarion, Astronomical Mythst
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT.
307
ception seems altogether arbitrary, and even whim
sical ; but if we
go back a century
or two to Dante's
Earth, we find a
globe still more
eccentric, one on
which the Para
dise - mount has
slipped down full
30° below the equa
tor, as shown in
the following figure,
construction is
The Earth of Columbus.
A fundamental datum for its
found in the description of the
Mountain of Purgato
ry, respecting whose
location it is said,
" Zion stands with
this Mountain in such
wise on the earth that
both have a single
horizon and diverse
hemispheres." a A
commentator on this
says, "When the Di-
vina Commedia was
written, Jerusalem was believed to be the exact
The Earth of Dante.
a. City of Jerusalem, b. Mountain of Pur
gatory, c. Inferno within the Earth.
p. 296. See also G. Marinelli, La Geografia e i Patri della Chiesa.
Roma, 1882.
1 Come cio sia, se il vuoi poter pensare,
Dentro raccolto immagina Sion
Con questo monte in su la terra stare,
SI che ambo e due hanno un solo orizzon,
E diversi emlsperi.
(Purgatorio, Canto iv., 67-70.)
308 PARADISE FOUND.
centre of the habitable hemisphere ; the other was
conceived to be covered with water. Out of this
ocean the mountain of the poet's Purgatory rises up,
like the Peak of Teneriffe, from the bosom of the
waves, and is exactly opposite to Mount Zion, so that
the two become the antipodes of each other. The
mathematicians in their measurement of Dante's
Hell proceeded in this wise : An arc of thirty de
grees was measured from the meridian of Jerusalem
westward as far as Cuma, near Naples, and here, at
the ' Fauces Averni' of Vergil, it pleased them to
locate its dreary entrance. Another arc of thirty
degrees was next measured from the same meridian
eastward, so that both together made up a portion
of the earth's circumference of about 4330 English
miles, the chord of which would be equal to its semi-
diameter. This was made the base of their opera
tions, so that with the world's centre for its apex
. . . the Inferno became as broad as it was deep.
At this centre of gravity, firmly wedged in everlast
ing ice, the grim monarch of these dolorous realms
is placed." 1
A more recent editor remarks, " Dante's Purga
tory is figured as an island mountain whose summit
just reaches to the first of the celestial spheres, that
of the Moon. ... It is exactly at the antipodes of
Jerusalem, and its bulk is precisely equal and oppo
site to the cavity of Hell. ... On the summit of
the mountain is the Earthly Paradise, formerly the
Garden of Eden."2
1 Henry Clark ¥>*x\w, Contributions to the Study oftheDivina Corn-
media. London, 1864 : pp. 169, 170.
2 A. J. Butler, The Purgatory of Dante. London, 1880 : Prefatory
Note. Compare Witte's genial lecture on " Dante's Weltgebaude,"
in his Dante- For schungen, Bd. L, pp. 161-182.
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT. 309
Upon the correctness of " the mathematicians "
above mentioned, the present writer is not prepared
to pass judgment,1 but no careful reader of the Divine
Comedy can fail to see that its " Mount Zion " and
the Purgatorial " Montagna malagevole, altissima et
cinta de mare!' are simply unrecognized " survivals"
of prehistoric thought, — antipodal world-mountains
once situate at the poles, but here relocated to suit
the demands of sacred mediaeval cosmology. They
are the Su-Meru and Ku-Meru of India figuring in
Christian poetry. In Lord Vernon's illustration of
this curious cosmos, a Hindu pundit would almost
certainly think he had a Puranic mappe-monde?
That after the Paradise-mount has thus declined,
first to the latitude of Central Asia, then to the
equator, and finally to the pendant position in which
Lord Vernon places it, directly under the City of
God, with a hypogene central Inferno between, —
that after such translocations it should so long have
eluded the recognition of all Paradise- seekers is
surely little wonder.3
1 Dante's instructor in the natural sciences was Brunetto Latini,
who was born A. D. 1230 and died 1294. He is paid an affectionate
tribute in the Inferno, xv. 85. He wrote a work of which Li Livres
dou Tresor, Paris, 1863, is an Old-French edition. In it (lib. i.,
part iii., c. v.) the author ably advocates the doctrine of the spher
ical figure of the earth. Dante's references to the author and to
his work have been carefully collected and presented in a learned
paper in the Jahrbuch der Deutschen Dante - Gesellschaft, Bd. iv.,
pp. 1-23.
2 See the " Figura universale della Divina Commedia," p. xxx. of
vol. i. of L' Infer no di Dante Alighieri da G. G. Warren Lord Vernon.
London, 1858.
3 Flammarion's picture (Myths of Astronomy, p. 311) corresponds
quite closely to Lord Vernon's, only the exactly south polar position
of the mountain is made, if possible, more unequivocal by inserting
the words " Southern Hemisphere," and making the pendant mount
3IO PARADISE FOUND.
Our Arctic Eden, therefore, by explaining the
origin of the cosmological conceptions of ancient
Chaldsea and Egypt and India, explains at the same
time the origin of the most eccentric and apparently
senseless conceptions of mediaeval and modern cos-
mographers, and presents what may properly enough
be called the philosophy of the errors and misconcep
tions and fancies of previous searchers after Para
dise. It is much that an hypothesis meets all the
requirements of a given problem ; it is more that it
does this better than any other hypothesis ; it would
seem to be past all question when it so illuminates
and enriches the very data of the problem that every
previous solution falls away of itself, the philosophy
of its origin and of its inadequacy being patent and
unquestionable.
its precise culmination point beneath. See, further, S. Giinther on
" Die Kosmologische Anschauungen des Mittelalters," in Die Rund
schau fur Geographic und Statistik, Bd. iv.
PART SIXTH.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OUR RESULTS.
CHAP.
I. FOR THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS.
II. FOR THE STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE.
III. FOR THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN AND EARLIEST FORM
OF RELIGION.
IV. FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF CIV
ILIZATION.
But as when one lights a candle to look for one or two things which they want,
the light will not confine itself to those two objects, so methinks, in seeking after
these two, the Universal Deluge and Paradise, and in retrieving the notion and
doctrine of the Primeval Earth upon which they depended, we have cast a light
upon all Antiquity. — THOMAS BURNET.
I have laid it down as an invariable maxim constantly to follow historical tradi
tion, and to hold fast by that clue even when many things appear strange and almost
inexplicable, or at least enigmatical ; for in the investigation of ancient history, the
moment we let slip that thread of Ariadne, we can find no outlet from the labyrinth
of fanciful theories and the chaos of clashing opinions. — F. VON SCHLEGEL, Phi
losophy of History.
Le mythe du jardin d'lCden n'est point une fiction ; il nous donne, sous une forme
d'enfantine poe"sie, la premiere page de 1'histoire morale de humanite, de cette his-
toire qui a pour documents non plus simplement quelques silex plus ou moins tailles,
mais toute cette survivance d'une vie divine dans 1'ame humaine, manifested par ses
aspirations et ses douleurs, et par cet universal sentiment de la deche"ance, qui pal-
pite dans toutes les mythologies et est 1'inspiration dominente de toutes les religions.
*- E. DE PRESSENSB".
Der Tempel des Heidenthums ist ein uralter Bau, aber ein Bau der nicht aus dem
Heidenthum stammt und nicht von den Heiden selbst errichtet ist. Die Mythen-
Inschriften und heiligen Legenden dieses Tempels enthalten urspriinglich dieUrge-
schichte der Welt und des Menschengeschlechtes, und die Verheissungen welche
demselben im Anfange geworden sind. — LI/KEN.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE STUDY OF
BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS.
How seemed this globe of ours when thou didst scan U ?
When in thy lusty youth there sprang to birth
A II that hath life, unnurtured, and the planet
Was Paradise, the true Saturnian Earth !
Far toward the Poles was stretched the Happy Garden,
Earth kept it fair by warmth front her own breast ;
Toil had not come to dwarf her sons and harden ;
No crime (there was no want /) perturbed their rest.
EDMUND C. STEDMAN, The Skull in the Gold Drift,
The solution of the problem of Life may come from an unexpected quarter. —
JOHN FISKE.
IF the alleged facts and the conclusions of the
foregoing chapters shall be accepted as correct, it is
plain that in finding the true answer to one of the
longest standing and most baffling of the problems
of Biblical theology we have at the same time found
one of those central key-truths, acquaintance with
which affects a great many other kinds of knowl
edge. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the
acceptance of this alleged truth upon its appropri
ate evidences, must affect men's estimate of the
sources of knowledge. For if the sacred traditions
of mankind, when once rightly interpreted, are dis
covered to be in astonishing harmony with each
other, and to yield results which our most advanced
sciences, working in the most varied fields of re
search, singularly conspire to verify, this discovery
cannot fail to give new significance to history in all
314 PARADISE FOUND.
its departments and in all its teachings. But apart
from this general effect of a verification of ancient
testimony, our precise conclusion as to the location
of the cradle of the human race has a most evident
and important connection with all physical, paleon-
tological, archaeological, philological, mythological,
ethnological, and " culture-historical " speculation, —
in a word, a most evident and important connection
with about every problem which in a marked degree
attracts and occupies our modern thought.1 In the
present Part it is proposed to notice the relation of
our facts and conclusions to a few of these fields of
study, and first of all, in the present chapter, their
bearing upon the study of biology and terrestrial
physics.
In Part Third and in the seventh chapter of Part
Fifth and elsewhere, we have already had various
illustrations of the fascinating and authenticating
light which the biological sciences can throw upon
the study of prehistoric traditions. Possibly the
reader, if devoted to this kind of study, has won
dered why a field of illustration so rich has not
oftener been utilized by writers upon antiquity.
But however important this bearing of biological
upon prehistoric studies may be, it should not be
forgotten that the counterpart bearing of the study
1 Even psychological research may be found to have a profound
interest in our result : " Here the question arises how far it [the jug
gler's mind-power over matter] may be affected by, or dependent
upon, electrical and magnetic phenomena and surroundings and cli
matic influences, since it flourishes at its best, both in the Old World
and in the New, as one approaches the regions of the Arctic Circle,
and enters the lands of the aurora and midnight sun." G. Archie
Stockwell, M. D., " Indian Jugglery and Psychology," in The Inde
pendent, New York, Sept. 27, 1883, p. 1221.
BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. 315
of the earliest traceable thoughts and beliefs of
mankind upon biology and upon the most fruitful
study of biology is not a whit less important. This
is a point of utmost moment to the fields of knowl
edge concerned and also to the general theory of
personal and organized culture ; yet it is a point
most infrequently brought under the consideration
of thoughtful readers.
It is an unfortunate and ominous fact that the aver
age biologist of the present day sees nothing worthy
of his professional attention back of the present cen
tury. The intellectual history of the human race
has not the slightest interest for him or value for
his work. Ages on ages of human observation and
thought and speculation touching the problems of
life are to him as if they had never been. If he ac
quaints himself with them in the slightest degree, it
is usually only for the sake of amusing his hearers
with what he considers the grotesque and absurd
ideas of former times, and impressing them with the
contrast which latter-day " science " presents. For
all that his race has done until just before his own
immediate teachers began, he has little more than
pity and contempt.
Now, in any department of human learning, such
an attitude of mind is certainly to be deplored. Its
effects are detrimental in every aspect. In propor
tion as it prevails among any class of intellectual
workers, in just that proportion does that class be
come isolated from the one collective and historic
intellectual life of humanity. In this way the col
lective intellectual life suffers, and yet more do the
isolated workers suffer. Humanity, conscious of an
intellectual history, naturally comes to pay little
316 PARADISE FOUND.
attention to these men who deny it, or take no in
terest in it. On the other hand, any class of men
who ignore the history of the human mind and be
gin all true history and all true science with their
own achievements, by this very procedure place
themselves outside that spiritual fellowship in which
all forms and fragments of knowledge find unity and
mutual supplementing. The circle of their intellect,
ual sympathies and tastes is narrowed. With the
loss of broad sympathies and tastes they are in dan
ger of losing even the capacity to discern and appre
ciate any kind of truth outside the limited range of
their own specialized field of professional research.
So far has this perilous tendency already gone that
it is a difficult thing in any country to find a cele
brated biologist whose publicly advocated theory of
education for his own field of labor does not quietly
ignore, or actively antagonize, the broadening his
torical and humanistic studies which alone can qual
ify a man for intelligent sympathy with all good
learning. Unless the tendency can in some way be
checked, there is positive danger lest the special
cultivators of biology and the natural sciences be
come as narrow and isolated and influenceless a
guild of experts as are the antiquarian-catalogue
makers of modern Europe.1
1 A few years ago Mr. John Stuart Mill, in an address before a
Scotch university, put forth a defense of the claims of classical stud
ies to a place in the regular university curriculum. For this one
crime he was recently editorially assailed and vilified through several
columns of an American organ of natural science, and despite the
fact that he was notoriously a disbeliever in Revelation, and was a
professed admirer of Comte's atheistic evolutional sociology, the
dreadful charge is brought forward : " He was in the Golden- Age,
Paradise-Lost dispensation of thought, in which the notions of the
early perfection of mankind and the superiority of the ancients were
BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. 317
In studies like the one which has thus far en
gaged us lies the best possible corrective for this
one-sidedness. In this field are found stimulation
for the student's curiosity, facts for his understand
ing, arguments for his reason, play for his imagina
tion. And all the time his study of Nature and his
study of Man are mutually helpful to each other.
He now has Nature and her life before him in two
forms : first, as she has entombed herself in the great
cemetery of the rocks ; and secondly, as she has pic
tured herself in historic and even prehistoric human
thought. If the former gives her with greater tan
gibility, it is only the tangibility of the mouldering
skeleton. It is the latter which shows her alive
and filled with all life's meanings. Each is impor
tant in its place, both being reciprocally corrective
and mutually complementary.
As yet the biologist has not profited by ancient
conceptions of Nature as he should have done.
How long and slow has been the progress of the
botanist up to this latest conception that all the life-
forms of the vegetable kingdom proceeded originally
from one centre, and that at the Pole ! The ancient
Iranian myth of " the tree of all seeds," from which
proceeded " the germs of all species of plants " that
ever grew, and which, moreover, was located at the
contrasted with the degeneracy of the moderns ; and so completely
was his intellect possessed and perverted by this view that he was dis
abled from appreciating the immense and epoch-making influence of
the modern doctrine of evolution." " The Dead- Language Supersti
tion," Popular Science Monthly, New York, 1883, p. 703. Such natu
ralists are too unlettered to know their own party leaders, or to be
aware of the fact that it is precisely to biology that Mill pays the
splendid tribute of declaring that among all departments of human
knowledge it " affords as yet the only example of the true principles
of rational classification."
318 PARADISE FOUND.
North Pole, ought long ago to have suggested to
him the truth as to the genetic unity of the vegeta
ble kingdom and also as to its pristine centre of dis
tribution. The same may be said of the zoologist
and the suggestiveness of the myths of the same
people respecting " the primeval ox " and the Gosh,
" the personification of the animal kingdom." 1 In
these survivals of ancient culture we have the forms
in which prehistoric zoology expressed the unity, the
monogenesis, and the north polar origin of the entire
fauna of the earth.
It is now, perhaps, too late for the biologist to
gain from these particular myths the instruction
which generations ago they could have given him.
By slower and more painful methods this beautiful
polocentric conception of the vegetable, animal, and
human worlds has at last been reached. The prob
lems of earliest floral and faunal and ethnic distri
bution have shut men up to its acceptance. But if
the discovery of the accordant significance of these
ancient myths has been equally delayed, we may at
least indulge the hope that the unexpected agree
ment of the prehistoric conception with that of
latest science will inspire in candid students of Na
ture a new and higher respect for the primeval teach
ings and beliefs of mankind. Meantime let it not
be forgotten that there are other myths, of equal
antiquity and possibly of wider prevalence, the sig
nificance of which for the progress of biology may
to-day be as great as ever was that of the tree of all
seeds.
Notice, for example, this curious fact : that while
in ancient East Aryan thought the gods on Mount
i Darmesteter, The Zend-Avesta, Part ii., p. no.
BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. 319
Meru are of prodigious stature the proper tenants of
the adjacent regions are somewhat less, though still
gigantic ; and they seem to dwindle regularly in
size from Varsha to Varsha, until we reach Bharata,
the Varsha which borders upon the equatorial ocean
and is peopled with ordinary men. And as if the
inhabitants of Hades, being still farther to the
South, must be by some law of nature still smaller
than men, Prince Satyavan's soul, when led away to
Yama's abode, is described in the Mahabharata as
only "a thumb in height." A striking gradation,
every one will say. Beginning with beings some
times represented as miles in height, it ends on the
borders of the Land of Death with disembodied
spirits whose stature is only a thumb's length. But
this conception of the range of the kingdom of gen
erated and mutable life was not limited to the an
cestors of the Hindus. In the most ancient Greek
thought the proper habitat of the Pygmies was near
the equatorial Ocean-river ; farther northward was
the abode of men ; still farther proceeding, one came
into the region of giants ; while in polar Olympos
the gods were so colossal that in his fall prostrate
Ares "covered seven acres."1 Traces of the same
remarkable adjustment are found in other mytholo
gies.2 Possibly this far-off prehistoric conception
has some significance, some lesson for the biology
of to-day.
What should this lesson be if not that in all our
1 Iliad, xxi. 407. In keeping herewith the more than gigantic Po
seidon passes with four strides from Thracian Samos to ^Egee. //.,
xiii. 20.
2 " The idea of the soul as a sort of ' thumbling ' is familiar to the
Hindus and to German folk-lore." — E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture,
i. 450 n.
32O PARADISE FOUND.
researches into the origin and sustaining conditions
of life the phenomena of the highest North should
be taken into account ? Too long have those who
busy themselves with these investigations been
turning their attention to the ice-cold abysses of the
"deep sea," hoping in some " bathybius " clot of the
sunless ocean-bottom to find the protoplasmic power
which has transmuted inorganic matter into micro
cosms of organic life. In no such region of cold and
darkness should this search be made.1 Let life's
beginnings and life's feeding forces be looked for
where its supreme vigor and exuberance have been
seen, — at the pristine centre whence the types and
forms of life have spread victoriously through the
world ; let them be studied at the Pole.2
On this subject as conservative an authority as
1 " As we descend from the shore into deep water, the temperature
becomes lower and lower the deeper we go, until we come to a stra
tum or zone of water about 32°-36° Fahrenheit, where circumpolar
or Arctic life alone abounds. . . . The water of the ocean all over the
globe below a depth of one thousand fathoms is of an Arctic temper
ature." — Packard, Zoology, p. 665.
2 Since the above was written, a distinguished specialist in deep-
sea dredging has borne the following striking testimony : " With re
gard to the constitution of the deep-sea fauna, one of the most
remarkable features is the general absence from it of Paleozoic
forms, excepting so far as representatives of the Mollusca and Brach-
iopoda are concerned ; and it is remarkable that amongst the deep-
sea Mollusca no representatives of the Nautilidce and Ammonitidat
so excessively abundant in ancient periods, occur, and that Lingula,
the most ancient Brachiopod, should occur in shallow water only."
Professor H. N. Moseley, F. R. S., Biological Address before British
Association in 1884. Nature, August 28, 1884, p. 428. The same
high authority adds, " With regard to the origin of the deep-sea
fauna there can be little doubt that it has been derived almost en
tirely from the littoral fauna," — agreeing herein with Professor Sven
Loven in his "splendid monograph," Pourtalesia, Stockholm, 1883.
The funeral sermon of the bathybius theory of the origin of life has
already been preached, and the text of the sermon was Job xxviii. 14.
BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. $21
Principal Dawson recently remarked : " It is not
impossible that in the plans of the Creator the con
tinuous summer sun of the Arctic regions may have
been made the means for the introduction, or at
least for the rapid growth and multiplication, of new
and more varied types of plants." 1
In this true centre what new and interesting as
pects the problems of life immediately take on ! 2
Here we have a regnancy of sunlight such as we
never dreamed of in our lower zones. Here we have
1 " The Genesis and Migration of Plants," in The Princeton Review,
1879, P- 292.
2 The following, from a recent newspaper, suggests some of the new
lines of desirable investigation : —
" The Norwegian plant-geographer, Schubeler, a short time ago
called attention to some striking and surprising peculiarities mani
fested by vegetation in high latitudes, which he ascribed to the inten
sive light-effects of the long days. Most plants in these regions pro
duce much larger and heavier seeds than in lower latitudes. Grain is
heavier in the North than in the more Southern latitudes ; the in
crease of weight being due to the assimilation of non-nitrogenous
substances, while the protein products have no part in it. The leaves
of most plants grow larger in the higher latitudes, and at the same
time take on a deeper, darker color. This fact has been observed not
only in most of the wild trees and shrubs, but also in fruit trees and
even in kitchen-garden plants. It has further been observed that the
flowers of most plants are larger and more deeply colored, and that
many flowers which are white in the South become in the far North
violet."
So potent and irrepressible are the powers of life in highest Arctic
latitudes that neither darkness nor the indescribable cold avail
against them. The algic flora well illustrates this statement. Ac
cording to a writer in Nature, Oct. 30, 1884, nearly all Arctic algae
live several years, and, in order that they may be able to effect the
work of propagation and nourishment, their organs are in operation
during the dark as well as the light season. Whilst wintering at the
northernmost part of Spitzbergen in 1872-73, Professor Kjellman
observed, in the middle of the winter — viz., at a time when the
sun was lowest, and the darkness, therefore, most intense — that a
considerable development and growth of the organs of nourishment
took place, while, as regards the organs of propagation, he found that
21
322 PARADISE FOUND.
a tension and a direction of terrestrial magnetism
with whose biological significance we are utterly
unacquainted. Here we have electric forces which
pour their currents through every grass-blade, and
tip the very hills with lambent flame.1 Shall not
such absolutely exceptional biological conditions
and energies be found to yield some exceptional
biological result ? Is not this a more hopeful field
for the study of the origin of life than the dark and
almost congealed recesses of the deep sea ? The old
theologians were accustomed to call Adam and Eve
it was just at this season that they were most developed. Spores of
all kinds were produced and became mature, and they developed
into splendid plants. The Arctic algae, therefore, present the re
markable spectacle of plants which develop their organs of nourish
ment, and particularly their organs of propagation, all the year round,
even during the long Polar night, growing regularly at a temperature
of between — 1° and — 2° C., and even attaining a great size at a
temperature which never rises above freezing-point. As to " mother-
region," the result at which Professor Kjellman arrived was that the
algae flora of the Arctic Ocean is not an immigrant flora, but that its
origin lay in the Polar Sea itself. This theory is, he believes, proved
by the fact that the Arctic algae flora is rich in endemic species.
There are many species found both in the Northern Atlantic and the
Pacific Oceans, a large percentage of which reaches very far north
in the Arctic Sea, and which have attained a high degree of develop
ment there, being characteristic algae of the Arctic Ocean ; and that
these species have been originated there, and gradually spread to the
other two oceans is, as he believes, more than probable. How little
our zonal diversities of climate affect the question of the possibility
of a universal distribution of a north polar flora, or even fauna, is
well illustrated in the following : " A remarkable fact associated
with the ocean temperature is that forms of animal life belonging to
the Arctic seas have been dredged up from the Antarctic Ocean at
depths of two thousand fathoms, and may have passed from pole to
pole through the tropics [in deep-sea currents] without having been
subjected to a greater variation of temperature than some five degrees or
to." Gen. R. McCormick, Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and
Antarctic Seas. London, 1884 : vol. i., p. 354.
1 The Arctic Manual, p. 739.
BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. 323
the "Protoplasts;" in their ancient polar home it
is possible that science may yet discover the divine
secret of all "protoplasm"
Again, our new interest in one of the terrestrial
polar regions gives fresh significance to the con
trasts between the two.1 Within ten years our most
eminent American geologist has said, " I find no
explanation in the present state of science, where
fore most of the dry land of the globe should have
been located about the North Pole, and of the water
about the South. Physicists say that it indicates
greater attraction and therefore a greater density in
the solid material beneath the southern ocean. But
why the mineral ingredients should have been so
gathered about the South Pole as to give the crust
there greater density is the unanswered query. It
may be that magnetite is much more abundantly
diffused through the Antarctic crust than the Arctic.
This is only one of many possibilities, and it is at
present without a satisfactory fact to stand upon
beyond the general truth that iron was universally
present." 2
But the diversity of the two Poles is as great and
as perplexing to the biologist as to the physical
geographer. " The researches made show that the
two polar regions differ greatly. The seas of the
1 " The higher mean temperature of the Northern compared to the
Southern hemisphere is clearly proved and universally acknowledged."
Professor Hennessy on " Terrestrial Climate " in Philosophical Maga
zine and Journal of Science. London and Edinburgh, 1859 : p. 189.
On the Northern hemisphere's greater length of spring and summer
see Malte-Brun, System of Universal Geography. Boston, 1834 : vol. i.,
p. 14. Also Mansfield Merriman, The Figure of the Earth. New
York, 1881 : p. 76. The disparity of mean temperature is now be
lieved to be less than was formerly supposed.
2 Professor Dana, in American Journal of Science, 1875, v°l' ^^
324 PARADISE FOUND.
Arctic teem with animal life. Land animals, such
as the bear, wolf, reindeer, musk-ox, and Arctic fox,
are scattered over the frozen surface of the land
where they find the means of sustenance. The air is
peopled with innumerable flocks of birds ; a hardy
vegetation extends close up to the Arctic Circle, and
beyond it, in mosses, lichens, scurvy-grass, sorrel,
small stunted shrubs, dwarfed trees, and in summer
beautiful flowers. In the Antarctic, on the con
trary, vegetation ceases at a certain limit, trees ter
minating at about 56° S. latitude. Animal life
abounds in the seas, but though birds exist in great
numbers and in varieties unknown in the Arctic,
no quadrupeds are found upon the land." l
With this we may compare the already cited lan
guage of Sir Joseph Hooker : " Geographically speak
ing, there is no Antarctic flora except a few lichens
and seaweeds." 2
Would it not seem as if the South Pole must
have been covered by " the barren sea " at the
period when floral and faunal life, starting at its
Arctic centre, began its conquering marches over
all the Earth ? Or is there rather some marked
difference in the biological value of the poles them
selves ? 3
But polar biological research involves antecedent
Polar Exploration and a wider and more system-
1 C. P. Daly in Johnson's Cyclopedia, Art. " Polar Research."
2 Nature, London, 1881, p. 447.
8 The latter explanation would seem to be favored by the experi
ments of Dr. Ferdinand Cohn, who found that a positive electrode
would hinder the development of micrococcus " in bci weitem hoherem
Grade als die negative" Beitrdge zur Biologic der Pflanzen. Breslau,
1879: p. 159. It is also known that eggs may be hatched quicker al
one pole of a magnet than at the other.
BIOLOGY AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. $2$
atic study of Terrestrial Physics.1 Herein lies a
fresh and novel impulse to reinvest on every side
the still uncaptured citadel of the Arctic Pole.
Long ago could Maury write, " As science has ad
vanced, men have looked with deeper and deeper
longings toward the mystic circles of the Polar
regions. There icebergs are framed and glaciers
launched ; there the tides have their cradle, the
whales their nursery ; there the winds complete
their circuits, and the currents of the sea their
round; there the aurora is lighted up, and the trem
bling needle brought to rest ; there, too, in the mazes
of that mystic circle, terrestrial forces of occult
power and of vast influence upon the well-being of
man are continually at play. Within the Arctic
Circle is the pole of the winds and the poles of cold,
the pole of the earth and of the magnet. It is a
circle of mysteries ; and the desire to enter it, to
explore its untrodden wastes and secret chambers,
and to study its physical aspects has grown into
a longing. Noble daring has made Arctic ice and
snow-clad seas classic ground. It is no feverish ex
citement nor vain ambition that leads men there.
It is a higher feeling, a holier motive : a desire to
look into the works of creation, to comprehend the
economy of our planet, and to grow wiser and better
by the knowledge." If such a passion for discovery
could be kindled in the presence of the older and
more abstract problems, what ought to be the result
when to these are added the possibility of solving
at least some of the mysteries of Nature's Life, and
the certainty of standing where Human Life began !
1 See APPENDIX, Sect. VII.: "Latest Polar Research." Also An-
dree, Der Kampf urn den Nordpol. 4 Aufl., Bielefeld, 1882.
CHAPTER II.
THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE STUDY OF
ANCIENT LITERATURE.
A nd the Greeks, ivho surpassed all men in ingenuity, appropriated to themselves
the greater part of these things, exaggerating them, and adding to them various
ornaments which they wove into this foundation in every style, in order to charm
by the elegance of the myths. Hence Hesiod and the famed cyclic poets drew their
theogonies, their gigantomachies, their mutilations of the gods, and in hawking
them, about everywhere they have supplanted the true narrative. And our ears,
accustomed to their fictions, familiar to us for several centuries past, guard as a
precious deposit the fables which they received by tradition, as I remarked when
I began to speak ; and, rooted by time, this belief has become so difficult to dislodge
that to the greater number the truth appears like a story told for amusement,
•while the corruption of the tradition is looked upon as the truth itself. — PHILO OF
BYBLOS.
SUMMING up the most probable results of all his
investigations, Darwin states as his opinion that
man must be considered as "descended from a
hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed
ears, probably arboreal in his habits, and an inhab
itant of the Old World." J
According to Hackel, this Homo primigenius was
a blackish, woolly-haired, prognathous, ape-like be
ing, with a long, narrow head. His body was en
tirely covered with hair, and he was unable to speak.
In reading most fashionable writers upon ancient
mythology and literature, one would think that they
conceived of the writers of the Vedic Hymns and
the authors of the myths of classic literature as very
early and but slightly developed descendants of this
hairy Homo Darwinius. Thus, according to Mr.
1 Descent of Man, Pt. II., ch. 21.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 327
Keary, at the time that the myth of the Cyclops
originated, " men really believed that the stormy sky
was a being and the sun his eye." 1 Indeed, it
might almost appear, from another passage in the
same book, that at the period when this Cyclops-
faith was reached men had arrived at quite an ad
vanced stage as compared with the earlier one, when
as yet they knew too little to look up at the sky at
all, and had an idea that the branches of the trees
extended quite to heaven. " The power of gazing
upward to heaven," he says, " came to us not all at
once, but gradually, through lapse of time. Savages
are said scarcely ever to raise their eyes, and their
heads are naturally inclined with a downward gaze,
so that it must be an effort for them to look at the
sky and the heavenly bodies. Primeval man lived
upon roots and berries, or on the lesser animals and
the vermin which he gathered from the soil, and so
habit as well as nature kept his eyes fixed upon the
ground. We need not therefore wonder if, in their
half-glances upward, our forefathers had not leisure
to observe that the tree-top was not really close
against the sky. They may well have deemed that
the upper branches hid themselves in infinitely re
mote ethereal regions." 2
The work which such men make in interpreting
ancient literature and thought is strange enough.
The ascription to Agni of the same supreme wor
ship which the bard has just paid to Varuna or Mi-
tra is explained as due to the extreme " shortness of
the memory " of early men.3 Only a knowledge of
1 Outlines of Primitive Relief. 1882 : p. 27.
2 Ibid., p. 58.
8 Ibid., p. 115.
328 PARADISE FOUND.
a most limited portion of the earth's surface can be
conceded to any of the ancient nations. The early
Aryans sing of the Ocean and of ships of an hun
dred oars, but it must not for a moment be sup
posed that they had ever seen or heard of the real
Ocean ; they had simply originated in their imag
inations a mythical one.1 In such hands the im
mortal Iliad becomes merely " a tale of land-battle,
the theatre of whose action is limited to the two
shores of the ^Egaean, the known world of the
Greek." 2 Though the Homeric poems betray in va
rious places an acquaintance with astronomy, and
actually name various constellations, yet, when the
question is raised as to how the poet conceived of
the return of the sun during the night from the
West to the East, even Mr. Bunbury silences us,
telling us that in Homer's day nobody had ever
thought of such a question ! 3
Illustrations of this worse than mediaeval igno
rance and distortion of ancient thought and language
could be multiplied to almost any extent. But as
some selection must be made, it may perhaps be
best to confine ourselves to three or four points in
a field comparatively familiar to all readers likely to
peruse these pages, — the field of Homeric cosmol
ogy. If we succeed according to our expectation we
1 Ch. Ploix, " L'Ocean des Anciens," Revue Archeologique, 1877,
vol. xxxiii.. pp. 47-54.
2 Keary, Primitive Belief t p. 296.
3 " How the sun was carried back to the point from which it was
to start afresh on its course, it is probable that no one in his day ever
troubled himself to inquire." (!) Hist. Ancient Geography, vol. i., p.
34. This does not well accord with the statement of Bergaine : " Le
sejour et 1'etat du soleil quand il a disparu sont des questions qui pre-
occupent vivement les poetes vediques." La Religion Vedique, torn,
i., p. 6.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 329
shall make it plain that those interpreters of Homer
whose conceptions of Greek culture are derived
from current Darwinistic anthropology rather than
from the poems themselves, demonstrate, by the
number and character of their exegetical entangle
ments, the entire incorrectness of their fundamental
assumption.1
i. The question just touched upon, the Move
ment of the Sun, is as good as any with which to
begin, and by which to show the embarrassments
into which accepted interpreters have continually
fallen in consequence of denying to the ancients a
knowledge of the spherical figure of the Earth.
Opening Keightley, we find the customary asser
tion that "according to the ideas of the Homeric and
Hesiodic ages the Earth was a round, flat disk, around
which the river Ocean flowed." Then he says that
" men, seeing the sun rise in the East and set in the
West each day, were naturally led to inquire how
his return to the East was effected." He alludes to
the fact that " in the Odyssey, when Helios ends
his diurnal career, he is said to go under the Earth ;"
but he adds that " it is not easy to determine whether
the poet meant that he then passed through Tar-
taros back to the East during the night." The
" beautiful fiction of the solar cup or basin," he thus
describes : " If, then, as there is reason to suppose,
it was the popular belief that a lofty mountainous
ring ran round the edge of the Earth, it was easy
for the poets to feign that on reaching the western
1 In W. Helbig's new work, Das Homerische Epos von den Denk-
mdlern erlautert, Leipsic, 1884, we have some symptoms of a new and
better type of Homeric archaeology. The author holds that in Ho
mer's day there were evidences of "lost arts," and in the treasures
found at Mycenae he sees the products of a pre-Homeric civilization.
33O PARADISE FOUND.
stream of Ocean Helios himself, his chariot and his
horses, were received into a magic cup or boat,
made by Hephaistos, which, aided by the current,
conveyed him during the night round the northern
part of the earth, where his light was only enjoyed
by the happy Hyperboreans, the lofty Rhiphaeans
concealing it from the rest of mankind. They must
also have supposed that the cup continued its course
during the day, compassing the earth every twenty-
four hours." Of this fiction, however, Keightley
confesses, "neither Homer nor Hesiod evinces any
knowledge." After quoting various later poets,
therefore, he concludes as follows : " From a con
sideration of all these passages it may seem to fol
low that the ideas of the poets on this subject were
very vague and fleeting. Perhaps the prevalent
opinion was that the Sun rested himself and his
weary steeds in the West, and then returned to the
East!' l By what passage, however, whether via
the North or underneath the supposed u flat disk "
of the Earth, Keightley makes no further effort to
determine.
The difficulty in the way of supposing that in
Homer's thought the nocturnal sun passed under
neath the flat Earth-disk, through Tartaros, back to
the East, is that the poet invariably represents this
Underworld as forever unvisited by sunlight. In
view of this, and of the ominous silence of Homer
as to any winged cup sailing round the earth to the
North, some interpreters warn us against expecting
any consistency of thought in poetry so primitive.2
1 Mythology, pp. 47-50. Here, as usual, Keightley closely follows
Volcker. For the " mountainous ring " see Ukert's map.
2 " Of popular views and conceptions one must not demand con-
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 331
Schwenck goes so far in this direction as to suggest
that the island Aiaie is a creation of the imagina
tion in the far West, called forth for the express
purpose of giving the mind a kind of resting-place,
where it can leave the sinking Helios without troub
ling itself with inconvenient speculations as to how
he is to get back to the Orient at the appointed
hour. He says : " The Homeric poetry could not
allow the Sun and the daylight to rest during the
night in the Homeric Hades, for in that case Hades
would have been illuminated. It therefore supposes
an island afar off at the end of the world, where
Helios and Dawn, after they have passed over across
the heavens, repose at night, and whence, after this
repose, they in the morning again ascend the sky.
An exact explanation as to how they come west-
wardly to this island and then in the morning rise
in the East lies aloof from the poetry, for in Homer
nothing of systems is to be found, and only each ob
ject taken by itself is correct and clear." l
Assume once a spherical Earth, and all these dif
ficulties of the interpreters are at an end. East and
West touch each other. Mr. Gladstone, before aban
doning fully the flat-earth theory, came as near the
truth as he possibly could and not hit it, when,
speaking of Helios, he wrote: "The fact of his
sporting with the oxen night and morning goes far
to show that Homer did not think of the Earth as
a plane, but round, perhaps, as upon a cylinder, and
sistency or completion. They go up to a certain point, apprehend
only a part, and this only as it appears at first blush ; they leave one
side all conclusive reflection, and are unconcerned about contradic
tions since they are not conscious of any" — J. F. Lauer in Anhang to
Ameis's Odyssey, x. 86.
1 Cited in Ameis, Odyssey, Anhang, xii. 4.
332 PARADISE FOUND.
believed that the West and East were in contact." *
He mistook, however, in suggesting Thrinakia as
the place of contact. It was rather on the meridian
of Aiaie, for we are expressly told that
Wi r' 'Hows
otKia Kal X°P°l €'°"1 K°d avro\al 'HeAioto.
" There are the abodes and dance-grounds of Au
rora, there the risings of the Sun." 2
Nor could anything be more natural than that the
poet, conceiving of the world of living men as
Homer did, and sending out his thoughts eastward
and westward in search of the meeting-place of even
ing and morning, should fix upon the meridian oppo
site his own, the very place and only place where
his eastward -journeying thought and his westward
journeying thought would of necessity meet. His
eastern hemisphere would naturally extend round
eastward until it met the edge of the hemisphere
extending round westward. On that farthest off me
ridian,3 therefore, he made the old day give place to
the new, eve to morn. That was the doubtful line on
which Odysseus and his companions were no longer
clear : " where was East and where was West, where
Helios went behind the Earth or where he rose
again." 4
2. The false assumption that Homer's Earth is
flat has created all the noted controversies connected
with his representations of the location of Hades.
This question has divided Homeric interpreters into
more than a dozen differing camps. Their mutually
1 Juventus Mundi, p. 325.
2 Odyssey, xii. 3, 4.
8 That the son of Odysseus by Kirke should have been named Teleg'
onos, " the far-away begotten" thus becomes peculiarly significant.
* Odyssey, x. 189-192.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 333
contradictory solutions of the problem would be the
laughing-stock of the opposers of classical studies,
were these latter only sufficiently acquainted with
the world's scholarship to be aware of their exist
ence. To review and solve the question in this
place would detain the general reader too long, but
in the Appendix, Section sixth, the assertions here
made will be found abundantly verified.
3. The same flat-earth assumption is further re
sponsible for all the difficulties which interpreters
have found in representing the Ocean, and in gen
eral the Water System of the Earth, in accordance
with the Homeric data.
These difficulties have been neither few nor small.
Four of them we will here notice. And, first, that
growing out of the statement that from deep-flow
ing Ocean " flow all rivers and every sea, and all
fountains and deep wells." 1 Volcker pronounces
this " hard to explain." He says, " An immediate
in-streaming of the Ocean into the sea can scarcely
be meant, partly because sea- water and ocean-water
do not unite, partly because Homer knows of no
such in-streamings in the Phasis and at the Pillars
of Hercules, and the origination of rivers in this
way would not be thinkable." 2 Other writers, de
voted to the illustration of ancient thought, seem
not to have stopped to inquire whether rivers flow
ing up-stream from the Ocean to the hills were
thinkable or not, and have gravely set before the
youthful student diagrams constructed on this plan
as the true representation of Homeric thought ! 3
1 Iliad y xxi. 196.
3 Homerische Geographic, § 49.
1 See the older Classical Atlases. " According to Homer," says
334 PARADISE FOUND.
A second embarrassing question has been this :
"If the Ocean - stream surrounded and constituted
the outermost boundary of the Earth-disk, what sus
tained the Ocean-stream itself and constituted its
further shore ? " As Volcker says, " Who on the
further side held in the billows of the vast World-
river, that they did not flow off into the empty
spaces of heaven ? Was it a narrow strip of the
inner Earth, or was it formless chaos, or the descend
ing rim of the sky, or the inner power of the waters
themselves ? " l Buchholz says, " By what the Ocean
itself was in turn bounded remains unclear. The
child-like imagination of the Homeric age contented
itself with that confused halbverschwommene con
ception." 2 The most natural answer, especially
from the point of view represented by Buchholz,
who, with Ukert and others, claims that the Ho
meric heaven was literally metallic, would seem to
be Volcker's third supposition, namely, that the rim
of the metallic sky constitutes the outer limit of the
Ocean-stream.3 This would correspond, also, with
the general notion that the circular disk of the earth
" divided the hollow sphere of the universe into two
equal parts."4 It would also exactly correspond to
Theodore Alois Buckley, in his translation of the Iliad > "the Earth is
a circular plane, and Oceanus is an immense stream encircling it,
from which the rivers flow inward" — of course, therefore, up-hill.
1 Horn. Geog., § 49. Compare Keightley : "As it was a stream it
must have been conceived to have a further bank to confine its
course." Mythology of Greece, p. 33.
2 Homerische Realien, I. I, p. 55.
3 In his earlier work, Die Mythologie des Japetischen Geschlechtes,
Giessen, 1824, p. 60, Volcker distinctly represents this as the ancient
Greek conception : " Wo der Himmel sich wahrhaft an den Okean
schliesst und dem kiihnen Schiffer das letzte Ziel geworden"
* Keightley, MythoL, p. 29.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 335
Flach's curious and elaborate representation of the
Hesiodic world in his recent work on the Hesiodic
cosmogony.1 Still further it would seem best to ac
cord with Homer's language describing the heavenly
constellations as bathing in the Ocean. On the
other hand, however, such a supposition would be
incompatible with the Homeric representation that
the farther shore presented a suitable landing-place,
and especially a landing-place situated, like that of
Odysseus, in the Underworld. Moreover, it would
be incompatible with the current notion that the
Homeric heaven was supported upon mountain pillars
standing on the Earth inside the Ocean-stream, like
Mount Atlas in western Libya.2 Again, therefore,
the question returns, "Given a flat Earth surrounded
by the Ocean-river, what constitutes the farther
shore, and how can the mariner who lands upon it
speak of himself as in the Underworld ? " The
learned Volcker leaves the subject with the unsatis
fying observation, "The poet has not answered our
questions."
A third embarrassment dwelt upon by the same
advocate of the flat-earth theory is that, as he un
derstands Homer, Hellas was the centre of the cir
cular Earth-disk, and not more than " ten or eleven
days' sail " from the Ocean in any direction ; and
yet the poet makes it eighteen days' sail by the
shortest route from Ogygia to the land of the Phae-
acians, and at least another in the same direction to,
1 Hans Flach, Das System der Hesiodischen Kosmogonie. Leipsic,
1874. (Diagram prefixed.)
2 Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grece Antique. Paris, 1857 :
vol. i., p. 596. In like manner Bunbury, History of Ancient Geogra
phy, vol. i., p. 33, represents the solid Homeric vault as resting on
the outermost edge of the circular earth just inside the Ocean-stream.
336 PARADISE FOUND.
Hellas, and yet Ogygia is the navel or centre of the
sea. "These," says he, "are insurmountable diffi
culties for him who would measure with the com
passes. Rather should we learn from this example
what folk-faith and folk-tales are. Where there is
no agreement we should not create one by main
force. The Earth is circular and Hellas is its cen
tre; that was the popular faith. But the situation of
the Ocean and the extent of the Earth are at the
same time such fluctuating ideas, and all any way
extended voyages seem to the poet to extend to
such a terrific distance, that it may well happen
to him to overpass all bounds out in that realm
where were, so to speak, the most terrific of all dis
tances." 1 Thus the nodding Homer is again caught
in contradiction, and to accommodate his exagger
ated and terrific distances even Gladstone at first
felt constrained to change the figure of the Earth-
disk itself, and to present it as a vast parallelogram
more extended from North to South than from East
to West.2
The fourth difficulty involved in the current inter
pretation is that experienced in harmonizing the
poet's representations of the Ocean, as commonly
understood, with his representations of the move
ments of the sun, as commonly understood. The
sun at evening certainly ceases to be visible to men.
According to the Homeric representation he returns
to the flowing of the Ocean.3 His bright light
sinks in it.4 At his rising it is also from the Ocean
1 Horn. Geographic, § 50.
2 See his map. Comp. Juventus Mundi, p. 493.
8 Iliad, xviii. 240.
4 Iliad, viii. 485.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 337
that he begins to mount the sky.1 Yet his setting
is also described as a going eTs VTTO yalav, under or
behind the Earth.2 How now, with a flat circular
disk for the Earth, and with a circumfluent Ocean in
the same plane, and with an eternally dark and un
sunned Hades just beyond the Ocean-river to the
westward, can these data be harmonized ? If we at
tempt to conceive of the Sun as literally sinking in
the ocean and hiding his light beneath its waters, he
has not gone e?s VTTO yalav, but rather " in under" the
Ocean. Moreover, the old difficulty reappears as to
how he shall get round into the East in time for his
rising again. Furthermore, if he is the whole night
concealed under the waves of the Ocean, descending
into it in the far West at his setting and ascending
out of it in the far East at his rising, how can we
arrange for his rejoicing himself night and morning
with his oxen on the island of Thrinakia ? 3 But
we cannot abandon this whole supposition, and let
the Sun set beyond and behind the Ocean-stream, for
that would be in the western Hades, where he never
shines. Nor yet, again, can we say that he descends
to the surface of the Ocean simply, and then, in his
" cup," or otherwise, moves round to the Orient by
way of the North, for then, the Ocean being in sub
stantially the same plane as the abode of men, they
would not be overspread with darkness, but would
enjoy, if not the spectacle of " the midnight sun,"
at least the full light of a sun moving round the
1 Iliad, vii. 422 ; Odyssey, xix. 433.
2 Odyssey, x. 191.
8 Odyssey, xii. 380. The only diagram based upon this conception
which I remember to have seen is in the rare and curious work by
Johannes Herbinius, Dissertationes de admirandis mundi Cataractis.
Amstel. 1678 : p. 13.
22
338 PARADISE FOUND.
horizon. On this supposition, too, Hades, just west
of the river, would also be equally illuminated. In
side the Ocean-stream he certainly does not hide
himself in the ground, for that would be incompati
ble with all the passages associating his rising and
setting with the Ocean. But if he cannot be con
ceived of as setting on the hither side of the stream,
nor on the farther side, nor yet as resting on the
Ocean, nor yet as hiding beneath it, what possible
conception of the matter remains ?
All this trouble is the natural result of one false
assumption, — the assumption that Homer's Earth is
a flat disk, Assume that it is a sphere, and every
one of these difficulties vanishes. Then, in caus
ing the Sun to descend to the Ocean in which lies
Aiaie the poet makes the bed to which the king of
day retires the same as that from which in the
morning he rises again. At the same time, from the
poet's standpoint and from the standpoint of the
lands inhabited by the poet's countrymen, each set
ting of the Sun was a going " behind the earth," to
reappear on the opposite side. This view of the
movement of Helios solves every perplexity ; and if
Homer had the knowledge of the Earth and Heavens
involved in the view, we may be sure he also knew
as well as we do in what sense the Ocean is the
source of all springs and rivers, and for what reason
the equatorial Ocean never runs away for the lack
of an ultra-terrestrial shore.
4. The same hermeneutical myopia which has
thus minified and misconceived every feature of Ho
mer's cosmography has introduced and maintained
the now universal dogma that in the Homeric poems
" Olympos is always the Thessalian mountain " of
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 339
that name.1 All our youth are taught that " the
early poets believed that the gods actually lived
upon the top of this mountain separating Macedonia
and Thessaly. Even the fable of the giants scaling
heaven must be understood in a literal sense ; not
that they placed Pelion and Ossa upon the top of
Olympos to reach the still higher heaven, but that
they piled Pelion on the top of Ossa and both on
the lower slopes of Olympos to scale the summit of
Olympos itself, the abode of the gods." 2 To settle
the question negatively as well as positively, revered
German erudition solemnly declares, "The gods of
Homer never live in heaven."3 Such dogmatism
challenges a fresh investigation of the question.
Taking up this subject, Keightley remarks that if
we were to follow the teachings of Comparative
Mythology we should have to locate the abode of
Homer's gods in the heights of heaven. His lan
guage is : " Were we to follow analogy, and argue
from the cosmology of other races of men, we would
say that the upper surface of the superior hemi
sphere was the abode of the Grecian gods." 4 He
goes on to allude to the conceptions of the Scandi
navians and some other peoples, and adds, " Hence
we might be led to infer that Olympos, the abode of
the Grecian gods, was synonymous with heaven,
and that the Thessalian mountain and those others
which bore the same name were called after the
original heavenly hill."
It is a pity that the learned author could not have
1 Ameis and Hentze, Ilias, i. 44.
2 Smith's Classical Dictionary, Art. " Olympus."
8 Volcker, Homerische Geographic, pp. 9, 12.
4 Mythology. Fourth Edition. London, 1877 : p. 34.
34O PARADISE FOUND.
accepted this very sensible conclusion ; but he did
not. Rejecting the admitted intimations of Com
parative Cosmology, he says, "A careful survey,
however, of those passages in Homer and Hesiod in
which Olympos occurs will lead us to believe that
the Achaeans held the Thessalian Olympos, the
highest mountain with which they were acquainted,
to be the abode of their gods."
The only passage specially referred to by Keight-
ley, as establishing this view, is the Iliad, xiv. 225
seq., where the language employed is not at all in
consistent with the idea that, in descending from
the summit of Olympos, Hera descended from the
northern sky. More elaborate is the argument of
Volcker,1 but its logical cogency is by no means
admissible.
The true Homeric conception of the abode of the
gods is far loftier, grander, and more poetic than
that given us by such interpreters. According to
the poet's real representation, that abode is "the
wide heaven," — not the atmospheric heaven, ovpa-
voi/ lv aWepi KOL ve^eA^o-ti/, for this is a special posses
sion of Zeus (Iliad, xv. 192) ; it is the upper sky,
1 Homerische Geographic und Weltktmde, pp. 4-20. Copied by
Buchholz, Horn. Realien, I. § 12. Professor Blackie's reasoning is en
tirely subjective : " In a spiritual religion, like Christianity, the word
heaven will always be kept as vague as possible ; in an imaginative
and sensuous religion, like the Greek, it must be localized. A Zeus
with human shape and members must sit on a terrestrial seat ; and
the only seat proper for him is the highest mountain in the country
to which he belongs. Now, as the original seat of the Greeks, when
they rested from their long journey by the Caspian and Euxine west
ward, was the plains of Macedonia and Thessaly, the necessary local
ity for the throne of the Supreme God and the council of the Immor
tals was Olympos, the extreme east end of the long Cambunian range
separating Thessaly from Macedonia, to the north of the Peneios and
the defile of Tempe." Homer and the Iliad. Edinburgh, 1866 : vol
iv., p. 174.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 341
the celestial dome in which sun, moon, and stars
wheel silently around the Pole. To the early Greek,
as to the early Perso-Aryan, it was easy to con
ceive of this celestial dome as a heavenly moun
tain, vast, majestic, of unearthly beauty, and peo
pled with glorious beings invisible to mortals. And
this heavenly mountain he called Olympos. The
Thessalian mount, the Bithynian, and all the dozen
others of the same name l were sacred only so far as
they symbolized and commemorated their heavenly
original. In the Odyssey, xi. 315, it is plain that
Homer speaks of the Thessalian Olympos along
with other Thessalian mountains ; 2 but in general
he means by Olympos the heights of the northern
heaven viewed as the proper abode of the gods.3
The proofs of the incorrectness of the current
1 Heyschius professed to have knowledge of fourteen mountains
bearing the name of Olympos.
2 To all who deny that heaven was to Homer the abode of the
gods this passage presents insurmountable difficulties. To place
Ossa upon Olympos, then upon Ossa Pelion, in order, by means of
the three, to climb up into an abode situated on the top of the under
most of the three, is the problem ! No wonder that Volcker thinks
Homer has been overpraised for his knowledge of localities and of
the arrangement of mountains : " Der Olymp muss auf jeden Fall zu
unterst kommen, und die Folgerung aus dieser Stelle fiir die Homer-
ische Localkenntniss und Grundlage der Wirklichkeit in Anordnung
der Berge miissen wir dahin gestellt sein lassen." Horn. Geog., p. 9.
Truly amusing is the haughty remark under which Hartung beats a
retreat : " Warum aber sollte ein Gelehrter iiber solche Wiederspriiche
sich Scrupel machen da die religiose Vorstellung sich niemals daran
gestossen hat?" Die Religion und Mythologie der Griec/ien, Th. iii.,
6. But one German, and he a Swiss, seems to have apprehended
the inevitable implication of this passage : " Jedoch war dem Griechen
wohl bewusst, dass die Gotter nicht eigentlich und wirklich auf dem
Olymp wohnten, wie aus der Beschreibung des Kampfes des Otus
und Ephialtes gegen die olympischen Gotter hervorgeht." Rinck,
Die Religion der Hellenen. Zurich, 1853 : vol. i., p. 207.
8 Compare Pictet, Les Origines, Paris, 1877 : torn, iii., p. 225.
342 PARADISE FOUND.
interpretation appear on almost every page of the
Homeric poems. The designation of the gods by
the formula ot ovpavov evpw IXOV(TLV occurs twice in the
Iliad and sixteen times in the Odyssey, but the ex
pressions " who possess the wide heaven," in Odys
sey, xix., line 40, and " who possess Olympos," line
43, are plainly identical in meaning.1 So in the Iliad,
"the immortals who possess the Olympian man
sions " and " the gods who possess the wide heaven "
are unquestionably interchangeable phrases.2 Hence
also " the Olympians," " the Uranians," and " the
Epouranians " are names of the same beings.3 In
Hesiod's Theogony the expression ei/ros 'OA^TTOV,
" within Olympos," occurs no less than three times.4
To translate it according to the current interpreta
tion of Homer is to locate the palace of Zeus in the
heart of an earthly mountain and to transform the
" Lichtgestalten " of his heavenly court into Trolls.
In book twenty -four of the Iliad, verse ninety-
1 Comp. xii. 339 ; also the Homeric Hymn, In Apollinem, ii. 320,
334. In the Iliad, \\\\., lines 393 and 411, the selfsame portals are
called now " gates of heaven," now "gates of Olympos."
2 Book i. 18 ; ii. 13, 30, 484 ; v. 383, 404, et passim. See Volcker,
Homerische Geographic, p. 13 (§ 9).
3 Book i. 399, xx. 47, and often ; i. 570 ; v. 373, 898, etc. ; vi.
129, 131, 527. Compare i. 497 : —
'Hepf?? 8' avfp-r) fj.4yav ovpavbv Otf\v/LLTr6v re.
A similar identification occurs in Hesiod, 7fteogony, v. 689. See L.
Preller, " Daher der Himmel und der Olymp auch ganz gleichbe-
deutend gebraucht werden kdnnen." Griechische Mythologie. Leip-
sic, 1854 : vol. i., p. 48.
4 Lines 37, 51, 408. The interpreters of Hesiod have found this
so great a crux that Gottling and Paley make it a ground for ques
tioning the genuineness or antiquity of the passages. See also
Schoemann, Die hesiodische Theogonie ausgelegt und bewtheilt. Ber
lin, 1868: p. 303. Yet Pfau, in Pauly's Real-Encydopaedie, Art
" Olympos," affirms that we find in Hesiod " exactly the same con
ceptions of Olympos " as in Homer.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 343
seven, we are told that Iris and Thetis were im
pelled up " to heaven " (es ovpavov). But the moment
the Father of gods and men begins discourse,
he says, "Thou hast come to Olympos, O goddess
Thetis ; " and in verse one hundred twenty-one the
bard resumes, " Thus he spoke ; nor did the silver-
footed goddess Thetis disobey, but rushing im
petuously, she descended down from the tops of
Olympos."1
One of the most vivid of the pictures of Olympian
life in the whole Iliad is that portraying (book xv.
14 ff.) the punishment of Hera by Zeus. In the
literal translation of Buckley, it is thus rendered :
" O Hera, of evil arts, impracticable, thy stratagem
has made noble Hector cease from battle, and put
his troops to flight. Indeed, I know not whether
again thou mayst not be the first to reap the fruits
of thy pernicious machinations, and I chastise thee
with stripes. Dost thou not remember when thou
didst swing from on high, and I hung two anvils
from thy feet, and bound a golden chain around thy
hands, that could not be broken ? And thou didst
hang in the air and clouds, and the gods commis
erated thee throughout lofty Olympos ; but stand
ing around, they were not able to release thee ; but
whomsoever I caught, seizing, I hurled from the
threshold of heaven till he reached the earth, hardly
breathing."
Although the words " of heaven " are supplied by
the translator, the contrast required by the expres-
1 Similar cases occur ; Iliad, i. 195, 208, compared with 221 ; v.
868 with 869; xix. 351 with 355 ; xx. 5 with 10 ; Od., xi. 313 with
316; xx. 31 with 55 ; also 103 with 113. It is astonishing that Faesi
can say that the case in the text is the only one found in the
Iliad. Odysee, Einleitung, p. xvii.
344 PARADISE FOUND.
sion "reached the earth" compels the supply in
order to make good sense.
In book first Hephaistos gives his own account of
this same hurling out of heaven. He says, " Be
patient, my mother, and although grieved restrain
thyself, lest with my own eyes I behold thee beaten,
being very dear to me ; nor then, though full of grief,
should I be able to assist thee, for Olympian Zeus
is difficult to be opposed. For upon a time before
this, when I desired to assist thee, having seized me
by the foot, he cast me down from the heavenly
threshold (/fyAov fco-Treo-ioio).1 The whole day was I
hurled, and at the setting of the sun I fell on Lem-
nos, and but little of life remained in me."
Nothing can well be plainer than that this whole
scene is conceived of as occurring high in the vault
of heaven. To locate it on any " many-peaked
mountain " every way embarrasses the imagination.2
Moreover, Lemnos is not situated under Thessa-
1 " Heavenly threshold " is Buckley's rendering of this term, though
he elsewhere distinguishes Olympos from heaven, as in note on book
xvi. 364. In ancient cosmology the " door of heaven " was situated
at the North Pole of the sky. Khandogya-Upanishad, xxiv. 3, 4, 7, 8,
II, 12. Sacred Books of the East, vol. i., Pt. I., pp. 36, 37. For
the rabbinical usage see Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, Bd.
ii., p. 402.
2 Thus Volcker, after reminding the reader that "there can be no
doubt that the gods are here represented as on Olympos, and not
where Hera hung eV aiOepi Kal vttyeXrjaiv" exclaims very naturally,
"Where now is the end of the rope made fast ?" He immediately
adds as his answer, " Ohne Zweifel irepl piov OV\VJU.TTOIO I — Without
doubt around the peak of Olympos ! " No wonder he places an ex
clamation point after such a masterpiece of interpretation. Possibly
the French savant, M. Boivin,' who to explain Od.t vi. 40 ff., con
tended that Homer conceived of Olympos as an inverted mountain,
having its snowy top near the earth and its snowless and rainless
toots in heaven, caught his idea from Volcker's exegesis of this pas*
saee !
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 345
Han Olympos, nor could the word Kamrca-ov describe
Hephaistos's motion in space from the one to the
other. So irresistible, indeed, is the right inter
pretation that Keightley, unconscious of his in
consistency, elsewhere says, "The favorite haunt
of Hephaistos on earth was the isle of Lemnos.
It was here he fell when flung from heaven by
Zeus for attempting to aid his mother Hera." l In
like manner Professor Geddes, with a forgetfulness
equally entertaining, writes of Zeus "hurling He
phaistos over the celestial battlements" and of his
being "able to draw gods and earth and sea aloft
into the sky." 2
The not less famous passage in the opening lines
of book eighth is even more conclusive : " Whomso
ever of the gods I shall discover, having gone apart
from the rest, wishing to aid either the Trojans or
the Greeks, disgracefully smitten shall he return to
Olympos ; or, seizing, I will hurl him into gloomy
Tartaros, very far hence, where there is a very deep
gulf beneath the earth, and iron portals, and a
brazen threshold,3 as far below Hades as heaven is
from earth ; then shall he know by how much I
am the most powerful of all the gods. But come,
ye gods, and try me, that ye may all know. Having
suspended a golden chain from heaven, do all ye
gods and goddesses suspend yourselves therefrom ;
yet would ye not draw down from heaven to earth
your supreme counselor Jove, not even if ye labor
ever so much : but whenever I, desiring, should
1 Mythology, p. 97.
2 The Problem of the Homeric Poems, p. 133.
3 Here is the Underworld door and threshold corresponding to the
upper, north polar one from which Hephaistos was hurled down to
earth. Compare also Hesiod's description.
346 PARADISE FOUND.
wish to pull it, I could draw it up together, earth,
and ocean, and all ; then, indeed, would I bind the
chain around the top of Olympos, and all these
should hang aloft. By so much do I surpass both
gods and men."
Comment is unnecessary. Until the whole of a
thing can be suspended upon and supported by a
part of itself, no interpreter can make the top of
Olympos in this passage signify the top of a moun
tain in Thessaly.1
If any further evidence can be needed to show
that no mountain of earth can meet the requirements
of the language of the Iliad respecting Olympos, it
is surely afforded in the passages already alluded to
where suppliants, addressing the gods as " Olym
pian," are said to stretch forth their hands toward
"the starry heavens." An example of this is the
following : " But the guardian of the Greeks, Ge-
renian Nestor, most particularly prayed, stretching
forth his hands to the starry heaven : ' O Father
Zeus, if ever any one in fruitful Argos, to thee burn
ing the fat thighs of either oxen or sheep, suppli
cated that he might return, and thou didst promise
1 The heroic manner in which Professor Geddes accepts this grave
alternative and shifts his own embarrassment to the shoulders of the
poet is somewhat discouraging to interpreters who have an inclina
tion to find a rational meaning in their author. He says, " The
manner in which this f>iov OvX-ufjuroio is referred to in a concrete form
shows that it was not only a visible but [also a] commanding object
in the poet's landscape ; so much so that it embarrasses his physical
speculations and conceptions of the Cosmos [sic], since it is made the pin
nacle on which the world of sea and land is to be suspended by the
golden chain. The piov here, however, must le a part of the veritable
mountain, not any idealized Olympos" (!) Win. I). Geddes, LL. D.,
The Problem of the Homeric Poems. London, 1878 : p. 257. This
is as bad as the exclamatory arbitrariness of Volcker, on the same
passage, Geog., § n.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 347
and assent, be mindful of these things, O Olympian,
and avert the cruel day.' " 1
Nor is the language of the Odyssey less opposed
to the prevailing interpretation. Here Olympos is
metaphorically spoken of precisely as we speak of
heaven : " For Olympos hath given me grief " (iv.
722). Again, in a memorable passage, it is de
picted in terms which plainly belong to no sub
lunary sphere: "Thus having spoken, blue -eyed
Athene departed to Olympos, where they say is
forever the firm seat of the gods ; it is neither shaken
by the winds, nor is it ever bedewed by the shower,
nor does the snow approach it ; but a most cloud
less serenity is spread out, and white splendor runs
over it, in which the blessed gods are delighted all
their days. To this place Athene departed when
she had admonished the damsel." 2
In book xx. 30, Athene descends "from heaven"
(ovpavoOw KaTafiao-a), while in line 55 her return is
described as "to Olympos." So in line 103 Zeus
thunders
GMT* aly\^€vros 'OX^ifjnrov
v\l/6dev e/c vffyewv,
but in line 113 the same thundering is described as
far3 ovpavov affrepdevros.
As in the Iliad, so in the Odyssey, suppliants ad
dress their prayers toward " the starry heaven ; " 3
1 Book xv. 371, 375. Comp. x. 461 ; iii. 364 ; vii. 178, 201 ; viii.
365 ; xvi. 232; xix. 257 ; xxi. 272 ; xxiv. 307, etc.
'2 Book vi. 40. On p. 65 of his Mythology, Keightley quotes this
passage as apparently somewhat inconsistent with his view, but
nevertheless renews his assertion that " the Greeks of the early ages
regarded the lofty Thessalian mountain named Olympos as the dwell
ing of their gods." Compare Volcker : " In nearly all poets such
contradictions are found." Geog., p. 6.
8 Odyssey, ix. 527, and elsewhere.
348 PARADISE FOUND.
and the gods who possess Olympos are called v-
pdpTvpoi, or the " witnesses on high." 1
So unmistakable is this language and the entire
usage of the Odyssey that various recent writers,
not emancipated from the traditional view as re
spects the Iliad, have yet perceived and admitted
the identity of "OA.V/XTTOS and the upper ov/mvos in the
former work. Among German scholars, Faesi 2 and
Ihne3 have expressed themselves in this sense, and
prominent among the Scotch, Professor Geddes.4
The latter says, " There is nothing in the Odyssey
which obliges us to think of Mount Olympos." Tes
timony from such a quarter is of course all the more
convincing.
In Homeric thought, then, the abode of the gods
was where we should antecedently expect to find it,
namely, in the heights of heaven. Considered with
reference to the august sovereign of gods and men,
1 Odyssey, xiv. 393, 4.
2 Note on Iliad, i. 420, and in Einleitung to the Odyssey, p. xvii.
3 Smith's Dictionary of Biography, Art. " Homer," p. 510.
4 Op. cit., §§ 155, 156, pp. 260-263. Professor Geddes' elaborate
argument to prove that " the Olympos of the Achilleid " is " a veri
table mountain, and that in Thessaly " is entirely inconclusive. The
use of a.y<ivvi(pos no more necessitates a literal interpretation than
does a poet's application of the term " snowy " to a living bosom, or
"fleecy" to the clouds. So iroXuirruxos proves nothing at all to his
purpose, since Euripides — never having read the Professor's instruc
tive statement, " The epithet TTOXVTTTVXOS, applicable only to mountains,
is a sufficient barrier to prevent the identification with ovpav6s " — ap
plies it again and again to many-strata-ed Ouranos. Even the Profes
sor's one only evidence not by his own concession merely "presump
tive," to wit, the "great simile" of the Iliad, book xvi. 364, tells
against rather than for him, for the oir' OV\V/J.TTOV veQos cannot pos
sibly come alQepos e/c Sirjs into the atmospheric ovpav'bv where clouds
move, unless Olympos be where the divine ether is, high above the
atmospheric heavens. Volckers treatment of the passage is so ab
surd that Geddes does not even attempt to follow it. Horn.
§13-
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 349
the polar sky-arch was a palace, the royal residence,
the Sw/xa or So/xos of Zeus.1 Viewed with reference
to its tints, steel-blue and gold, it was described as
metallic, o-t8^peos, x^A/ceos and TroA^aXKo?, terms which
metallic interpreters like Voss and Buchholz and
Bunbury have pushed to absolute literalness.2 Con
ceived of as an ethereal height, it was pictured as
a heaven - high mount, " snowy " as its own white
clouds. Then to the climbing imagination, mount
ing height above height in the vain attempt to reach
the summit, the mountain became alms (II., v. 367,
869 ; xv. 84) ; /xa/cpos (II., i. 402, and in ten other pas
sages) ; TroAuoapas (II., i. 499 ; v. 754 ; viii. 3) ; and
TroAvTrrvxos (II., viii. 411 ; xx. 5). This last descrip
tion, " the Olympos of many layers, or thicknesses"
is peculiarly expressive. Instead of signifying the
"ridges" of a mountain or range of mountains, as
Geddes and so many before him have affirmed, it
1 The house of Hephaistos in Olympos is plainly styled " starry."
Iliad, xviii. 370, comp. with 146, 148. Moreover, Aristotle, or who
ever wrote the " Letter of Aristotle to Alexander on the System of
the World," in one passage expressly identifies Ouranos and Olympos,
saying that for diverse etymological reasons we call the outermost cir
cumference of heaven by both names. See Flammarion, Astronomical
Myths, or History of the Heavens, p. 156. Even Volcker, in first lay
ing down the thesis which has so misled all his successors ("dass
Uranus und Olympus nie als synonym bei Homer gebraucht wer-
den "), frankly confesses that this is " gegen die bisher allgemein
gehegte Meinung ; " that is, " contrary to the opinion hitherto gen
erally held." Homerische Geog., p. 4. With gods of Homeric size,
a single one of whom required seven acres for his couch, the idea of
placing the whole Olympian Court and Gotterleben on the sharp, nar
row, clearly visible peak in Thessaly is ridiculous.
2 Buchholz (Horn. Realien, Bd. i. i, p. 3) declares the metaphorical
interpretation " zu gekiinstelt" for those early times, and roundly as
serts that, " according to the idea of the Homeric Greek, heaven is
tine metallene Hohlkugel."" He should have added that to the same
infantile mind Aphrodite was a solid gold image (Odyssey, viii. 337)1
and the voice of Achilles (Iliad, xviii. 222) a brass projectile.
35O PARADISE FOUND.
pictures that world-old conception of a firmament,
not single-storied, but with heaven above heaven,
to the "third," or the "seventh," or the " ninth."
These heavens were conceived of by Homer him
self as in layers one above another, like the curved
lamincs (TTTVXO.I) of a shield.1 And what adds to the
fitness of the comparison and to the fitness of the
cosmic adornment of Achilles' shield is the fact that
to the omphalos of a shield there corresponded the
central and ever-abiding Omphalos of the Skies.
5. Finally, our larger and more rational interpre
tation of Homeric ideas beautifully explains " the
tall Pillars of Atlas," and solves the multiform per
plexities of the ruling authorities on this question.
In approaching the study of this subject several
questions occur to every thoughtful beginner, the
answers to which he can nowhere find. For in
stance : How can Homer speak of the Pillars of
Atlas, using the plural, when elsewhere in the early
Greek mythology the representations always point
to only one ? Again, if there is but one, and that
in the West, near the Gardens of the Hesperides,2
what corresponding supports sustain the sky in the
East, the North, and the South ? Or, if Atlas's Pillar
1 See Homer's own rplirrvxos, //., xi. 353, in just this sense. Com
pare the marvelous description in Plato's Republic, 616. Depuis had
caught the right idea when he penned the words, "POlympe, compost
de plusieurs couches sphtriques." Origine de Tous les Cults, torn, i., p.
273. So a recognition of the fact that the nine subterranean, or south
polar, Mictlans, or abodes of the dead, of the Aztecs were simply
the counterparts of their nine celestial, or north polar, Tlalocans, or
heavens, instantaneously clears up the long-standing difficulties of the
interpreters of that mythology. See Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii.,
PP- 532-537-
2 Hesiod, Theogony, 517. Atlas pflegt immer mit den Hespencien
genannt zu werden. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, vol. i., p. 348.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 351
is only one of many similar ones supporting heaven
around its whole periphery, how came it to be so
much more famous than the rest ? Or, if Homer's
plural indicates that all of them belonged to Atlas,
how came the idea of one Pillar to be so universally
prevalent ? If the support of heaven was at many
points, and at its outermost rim, how could Hesiod
venture to represent the whole vault as poised on
Atlas's head and hands ? l Again, if it is the special
function of Atlas, or of his Pillar, to stand on the
solid earth and hold up the sky, he would appear to
have no special connection with the sea : why, then9
should Homer introduce the strange statement that
Atlas " knows all the depths of the sea " ? This
certainly seems very mysterious. Again, if the office
of the Pillar or Pillars is to prop up the sky, they
of course sustain different relations to earth and
heaven. They bear up the one, and are themselves
borne up by the other. Yet, singularly enough, Ho
mer's locus classicus places them in exactly the same
relation to the two.2 Worse than this, Pausanias
unqualifiedly and repeatedly asserts that, according
to the myth, Atlas supports upon his shoulders
" both earth and heaven." 3 And with this corre-
1 Theogony, 747. Moreover, how could one limited being have
charge of so many and so widely separated pillars ? " It can scarcely
be doubted that the words a/x^is exoutnv, Odyssey, i. 54, do not mean
that these columns surround the earth, for in this case they must be
not only many in number, but it would be obvious to the men of a
myth-making and myth-speaking age that a being stationed in one
spot could not keep up, or hold, or guard, a number of pillars sur
rounding either a square or a circular earth." Cox, Mythology of the
Aryan Nations. London, 1870 : vol. i., p. 37 n.
2 " For that both heaven and earth are meant, not heaven alone,
is proved by various poetic passages, and by other testimonies." —
Preller, Griechische Mythologie, vol. i., p. 348.
* Book v. n, 2; 18, i. One interpreter makes the profound sug*
352 PARADISE FOUND.
spends the language of ^Eschylus.1 But what sort
of a poetic imagination is this which represents a
mighty column as upholding not only a vast super
incumbent weight, but also, and at the same time,
its own pedestal ? Is this a specimen creation of
that immortal Hellenic genius, which the whole mod
ern world is taught almost to adore ?
Turning to the authorities in textual and myth
ological interpretation, our beginner finds no help.
On the contrary, their wild guesses and mutual
contradictions only confuse him more and more.
Volck,er tells him, with all the assuring emphasis of
leaded type, that " in Atlas is given a personification
of the art of navigation, the conquest of the sea by
means of human skill, by commerce, and the gains of
commerce." 2 Preller instructs him to reject this
view, and to think of this mysterious son of lapetos
as a " sea-giant representing the upbearing and sup
porting almightiness of the ocean in contrast with
the earth-shattering might of Poseidon."3 The clas
sical dictionaries only perplex him with multitudi
nous puerilities invented by ignorant Euhemeristic
scholiasts, — stories to the effect that the original
Atlas was merely the astronomer who first con
structed an artificial globe to represent the sky ; or
that he was a Northwest African, who, having as
cended a lofty promontory the better to observe the
heavenly bodies, fell off into the sea, and so gave
gestion that in Homer's passage the yriv is " added by a zeugma " !
Merry and Riddell, Odyssey, i. 53.
1 Prometheus Sound, 349, 425 seq.
2 Mythologie des Japetischen Geschlechts, p. 49 scq. Followed by
K. O. Miiller, Keightley, Anthon, and many others.
3 Griechische Mythologie, vol. i., pp. 32, 348. Followed by Faesi
and called by Professor Packard " the usually accepted."
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 353
name both to the mountain and to the Atlantic
Ocean. Schoemann does not profess a positive and
certain understanding of the matter, but suggests
that the mysterious Titan was in all probability
"originally a gigantic mountain-god" of some sort.1
Bryant at first makes Atlas a mountain support
ing a temple or temple-cave, called Co-el, house of
God, whence "the Coelus of the Romans," vol. L,
p. 274. In the next volume, however, he says that
" under the name of Atlas is meant the Atlantians."
And quoting the Odyssey, he translates thus : " They
[the Atlantians] had also long Pillars, or obelisks,
which referred to the sea, and upon which was deline
ated the whole system both of heaven and earth ; d/x^is,
all aroiuid, both on the front of the obelisk and on the
other sides'.' 2
If our investigator asks, as did an ancient gram
marian, how Atlas could stand on the earth and
support heaven on his head, if heaven was so far
removed that an anvil would require nine days and
nights in which to fall through the distance, Paley
kindly explains that " the poet's notion doubtless
was that Atlas held up the sky near its junction
with earth in the far West." 3 In this case, of course,
a reasonably short giant would answer the purpose.
If, after all his consultations of authorities, our youth
is still unsatisfied, and to make a last effort for light
turns to the illustrious Welcker, he learns as an im-
1 G. F. Schoemann, Die hesiodische Theogonie ausgelegt. Berlin,
1868 : p. 207.
2 Analysis of Ancient Mythology. London, 1807: vol. ii., 91.
8 The Epics of Hesiod, p. 229. On the other hand, another English
interpreter would give us a giant with shoulders as broad as the whole
heaven, and translate &/*</>}$ flgewu' " which support at either side;
t. e., at the East and West." Merry and Riddell, Odyssey, i. 53.
23
354 PARADISE FOUND.
portant final lesson that when an ancient author
says "heaven and earth," it is not for a moment to
be supposed that he literally means " heaven and
earth," and that, if they had remembered this, wri
ters on mythology would have spared themselves " a
vast amount of brain -racking and ineffectual pro-
&K&-contra pleading." 1 With this as the sole out
come of all his researches, may not a beginner well
despair of ever getting any knowledge of the mean
ing of the myth, if, indeed, he can still imagine it
to have had a meaning ?
Here, as everywhere, the truth at once explains
and removes all the difficulties which a false and
groundless presupposition has created.
Once conceive of the Homeric world as we have
reconstructed it, and how clear and beautiful the
conception of the Pillars of Atlas becomes ! They
are simply the upright axes of earth and heaven.
Viewed in their relation to earth and heaven respec
tively, they are two ; but viewed in reference to the
universe as an undivided whole, they are one and the
same. Being coincident, they are truly one, and yet
they are ideally separable. Hence singular or plural
designations are equally correct and equally fitting.
Transpiercing the globe at the very " navel or centre
of the sea," Atlas's Pillar penetrates far deeper than
any recess of the waters' bed, and he may well be
said to "know the depths of the whole sea." Or
this statement may have reference to that primordial
1 " Viel Kopfbrechens und vergeblichen Hin-und Herredens hat
der Ausdruck des Pausanias gemacht eVi TWJ/ &p.<av KO.TCI TO \€y6/u€va
ovpavdv re dWx*i fol rfv* der auch bei dem Gemalde von Pananos
(5, ii, 2) wiederkehrt : ovpavbv Kal yrjv <W%ajj/ TrapeVrTj/ce, indem man
ovpavbv Kal yr)v buchstablich verstehen zu miissen glaubte." — Gr.
Gotterlehre, vol. i., pp. 746, 747.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 355
sea in which his Pillar was standing when the geo-
gonic and cosmogonic process began. In this sense
how appropriate and significant would it have been
if applied to Izanagi ! 1
Again, the association of Atlas with the Gardens
of the Hesperides, so far from disproving our inter
pretation, actually affords new confirmation, since
^Eschylus, Pherecydes, and the oldest traditions
locate the Hesperides themselves, not in the West,
but in the extreme North, beyond the Rhiphaean
Mountains, in the vicinity of the Hyperboreans.2
In fact, there are very strong reasons for believing
that these Gardens of the Hesperides were nothing
other than the starry gardens of the circumpolar
sky ; that therefore the Hesperides were called
the " Daughters of Night," and that the great ser-
1 Compare the Vedic statement, " He who knows the Golden Reed
standing in the waters is the mysterious Prajapati." Muir, Sanskrit
Texts, vol. iv., p. 21. Garrett, Classical Dictionary of India, Art.
" Skambha." Still another explanation is suggested by the Rig-Veda,
x. 149 : " Savitri has established the earth by supports ; Savitri has
fixed the sky in unsupported space ; Savitri, the son of the waters,
knows the place where the ocean supported issued forth." Muir,
Sanskrit Texts, vol. iv., p. no (comp. Ludwig's German version). Ac
cording to this, he would be conceived of as knowing the depths of
the whole ocean, because its celestial springs are about his head, and
its lowest depths at his feet. — Since the foregoing was first printed
the author has met with the remarkable diagram, published four hun
dred years ago in the Magarita Philosophica, in which Atlas is repre
sented as a venerable man, with his feet at the inferior and his head
at the superior Pole of the heavens, precisely according to our inter
pretation. A reproduction of it can be seen in Flammarion, Astro
nomical Myths, p. 150. See, moreover, Aristophanes, Aves, 180 foil.,
for the significant etymology of ir6\os.
2 Preller, Griechische My'.hologie, vol. ii., p. 149. Volcker, Mytholo-
gisc/ie Geographic, pp. 133 seq. Wolfgang Menzel, Die vorchristliche
Unsterblichkeitslehre, vol. i., p. 98. On "/a Colonne dite Bortale,"
spoken of by a Greek geographer B. c. 275, see Beauvais, Revue de
VHistoirc des Religions. Paris, 1883 : p. 711 n. Comp. p. 700.
356 PARADISE FOUND.
pent which assisted the nymphs in watching " the
golden apples " was none other than the constella
tion Draco, whose brilliant constituent Alpha, the
astronomer's Thuban, was, less than fifty centuries
ago, the Pole-star of our heaven.1
Once more, our interpretation perfectly harmo
nizes the passages which represent Atlas as a heaven-
supporter with those which represent him as equally
supporting earth. More than this, it reveals the cu
rious fact that Homer's description of the tall Pillars
of Atlas identifies them with the axes of earth and
heaven so unmistakably that, in order to blunder
into the common mistranslation of it, it was first
necessary to invent, and get the lexicographers to
adopt, a span-new special meaning for the words
d/x,<£is ex€U/> — a meaning necessitated by no other pas
sage in the whole body of Homeric Greek. Homer's
beautifully explicit language is, —
e%ei Se re Kiovas avrbs
fiaKpds, a? ycudv re nal ovpa.v'bv a.p.<p\s exovffiv'
"Who, of his own right, possesses the tall Pillars
which have around them earth and heaven." 2 No
where in Homeric, if indeed in any ancient Greek,
does the expression mean "to prop asunder" 3
Finally, as to the supposed difficulty of imagining
a heaven-upholder so tall that it would take a brazen
anvil nine days and nights to fall from his head to
his feet, if Professor Paley had remembered San-
dalfon, the Talmudic Atlas, he would hardly have
1 Gustav Schlegel, Uranographie Chinoise. La Haye, 1875 : PP»
506, 507, 685.
2 Compare Odyssey, xv. 184.
3 Buttmann (Lexilogus, English translation, 5th ed., pp. 94-104) is
no more successful in showing such a meaning than are the older dic
tionary-makers.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 357
thought it necessary to locate the Hesiodic one on
the edge of the earth where the sky is low. Of San-
dalfon, Rabbi Eliezer has said, " There is an angel
who standeth on earth, and reacheth with his head
to the door of heaven. It is taught in the Mishna
that he is called Sandalfon ; he exceedeth his com
panions as much in height as one can walk in five
hundred years, and that he stands behind the chariot
[Charles's Wain] and twisteth or bindeth the gar
lands for his Creator." 1
Atlas's Pillar, then, is the axis of the world. It is
the same Pillar apostrophized in the Egyptian docu
ment known as the great Harris Magic Papyrus, in
these unmistakable words : " O long Column, which
commences in the upper and in the lower heav
ens!"2 It is, with scarce a doubt, what the same
ancient people in their Book of the Dead so happily
styled "the Spine of the Earth."3 It is the Rig-
Veda's vieltragende Achse des unaufhaltsam sick
drelienden, nie alternden, nie morscliwerdenden, durch
den Lauf der Zeiten nicht abgenutzten Weltrads, auf
ivelchem ALLE WESEN STEHEN.4 It is the Umbrella-
staff of Burmese cosmology, the Churning-stick of
India's gods and demons. It is the Trunk of every
cosmical Tree.5 It is the shadowless Lance of Alex-
1 Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, Bd. ii., p. 402 (Eng., vol. ii.,
p. 97). In all ancient cosmologies " the door of heaven " is at the
North Pole. Sacred Books of the East, vol. i., pp. 36, 37.
2 Records of the Past, vol. x., p. 152. Other references to the
Heaven-supporting Pillar may be seen in Brugsch, Thesaurus In-
scriptionum ALgyptiacarum, 1.82,83, 87, 177 et passim. Comp. fig.
opposite p. 175, and fig. No. 12, p. 124.
3 Chap, cxlii.
4 Rig Veda, i. 164. Grassmann and Ludwig.
6 Ludwig, in his version of the Veda, finds repeated occasion for
the use of the expression " Stengel der Welt:'1
358 PARADISE FOUND.
ander ; the tortoise-piercing (earth-piercing) Arrow
of the Mongolian heaven-god ; the Spear of Izanagi ;
the Hacha de Cobre on which the heavens of the
Miztecs rested.1 It is the Cord which the ancient
Vedic bard saw stretched from one side of the uni
verse to the other.2 Is it not the Psalmist's "Line"
of the heavens which " is gone out through " the
very " earth " and on "to the end of the world "?
It is the Irminsul of the Germans, as expressly rec
ognized by Grimm. It is the Tower of Kronos. It
is Plato's Spindle of Necessity. It is the Azacol of
the North African Sunis. It is the Ladder with
seven lamps in the rites of Mithra. It is the Tal-
mudic Pillar which connects the Paradise celestial
and the Paradise terrestrial.
In the foregoing discussions of Homeric cosmol
ogy we have had a sufficient exhibition of the cause
and cure of current — malpractice shall we call it?
— on the part of interpreters of Homeric poetry.
Their baseless assumptions and blunders have been
renewed and multiplied in nearly every field of ar
chaeology, — Assyrian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Persian,
Indian. Whithersoever "modern research" has gone
it has carried with it, as a kind of first principle and
rule of interpretation, the assumption that the early
nations cannot possibly have known anything about
the world, beyond what undeveloped tribes and peo-
1 F. Gregorio Garcia, Origen de los Indios del Nuevo Mundo.
Madrid, 1729: p. 337. Here, the "pole-axe" of ignorance has sup
planted the pole-axis of ancient science. Bancroft, Native Races, vol,
iii., p. 71. Compare the " Golden Splinter" of Manco Capac. Re-
rille, Hibbert Lectures, 1884 : p. 131.
2 Rig Veda, x. 129, 5.
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 359
pies would of necessity observe within their own con
tracted boundaries. The inconsistencies of igno
rance and of half-knowledge and of an undisciplined,
" child-like " imagination are therefore to be ex
pected at every step. Even the squarest contradic
tions must not surprise. Indeed, in respect to Ho
mer, the learned Sengebusch has actually formulated
the universal proposition that the results of investi
gations in different departments of Homeric study
"will always be found to contradict each other."1
In view of the accepted modern results of investi
gation into Homer's cosmology one is tempted to
justify the proposition, only qualifying it in a mild
degree, as follows : The results of all Homeric inves
tigations based upon the assumption that Homer
was too "primitive" a man to know where the sun
sets will always be found self-contradictory.
Against all such barbarizing misinterpretation of
ancient literature it is high time that a protest
should be heard. Long enough has the beauty and
the breadth of ancient thought, in poetry and myth
and even in word-building, been obscured and hid
den by this conceited assumption of the modern
teacher. It was bad enough when the old gramma
rians, assuming that Homer could have had no idea
of other than the nearest waters, mutilated the
grand proportions of the Odyssey to fit the voyag-
ings of its hero into the western basin of the Med
iterranean, or, worse yet, into the Euxine.2 But
this, after all, was an altogether pardonable offense
1 Hoffmann, Homerische Untersuchungen, vol. i., p. 30.
2 Mr. W. J. Stillman, in the The Century Magazine for 1884, has
just resketched in this antiquated fashion " The Track of Ulysses,"
confessing, however, that for his location of the all-decisive Ogygia
" there is no evidence : " pp. 562, 563. See his map.
360 PARADISE FOUND.
compared with the currently accepted procedure of
scholars, who, brought up apparently on magazines
of popular science, and imagining that Columbus
was the first man to whom the idea ever occurred
that the earth is round, approach the study of antiq
uity merely as the study of an older department of
barbarian folk-lore. Surely it is time to investigate
the great creations of ancient mind in a different
spirit.1 It is nothing short of deplorable to consider
the mass of senseless argument and false explana
tion annually crowded into the memories of succes
sive classes of academic and collegiate youth, — ar
guments and explanations which neither to teacher
nor taught have even the poor merit of intelligently
illustrating the evils of wrong principles of classical
hermeneutics. The discussions and results of the
present treatise have at least disclosed a conceivable
beginning of human history, according to which the
early generations of men can hardly have failed to
acquire that knowledge of the mechanism of the
heavens which all the oldest traditions of the race
ascribe to them.2 And if, in consequence of the
1 " Je tiefer Dr. Schliemann bei Troja grub, desto hohere Cultur
liess sich aus den Funden erschliessen ; so konnen auch wir sagen, je
alter die Nachrichten sich zeigen, desto grossere Bildung der Vorfah-
ren verrathen sie." Anton Krichenbauer, Beilrage zur homerischen
Uranographie , Wien, 1874, p. 13. Comp. 68, 69 et passim. The
statement has reference to astronomical science among the earliest
Greeks.
2 " Among the Jews there are traditions of a very high antiquity
for their astronomy. Josephus says : ' God prolonged the life of the
patriarchs that preceded the Deluge, both on account of their virtues
and to give them the opportunity of perfecting the sciences of geom
etry and astronomy, which they had discovered ; which they could
not have done if they had not lived 600 years, because it is only after
the lapse of 600 years that the great year is accomplished.'
" Now, what is this great year or cycle of 600 years ? M. Cassini,
STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE. 361
acceptance or even the discussion of the proffered
results, the eyes of scholars shall at last once more
be directed to the study of the great literary and
other art-works of ancient mind in a new and more
modest spirit, the gains which are sure to accrue
therefrom will be neither few nor small.
the director of the Observatory of Paris, has discussed it astronom
ically. He considers it as a testimony of the high antiquity of their as
tronomy. ' This period,' he says, ' is one of the most remarkable that
have been discovered ; for if we take the lunar month to be 29 days,
12 h. 44 m. 3., we find that 219,146^ days make 7,421 lunar months, and
that this number of days gives 600 solar years of 365 days, 5 h. 51 m.
36 s/ If this year was in use before the Deluge, it appears very proba
ble, it must be confessed, that the patriarchs were already acquainted
to a considerable degree of accuracy with the motions of the stars, for
this lunar month agrees to a second, almost, with that which has been
determined by modem astronomers." — Flammarion, Astronomical
Myths. Paris, p. 26.
CHAPTER III.
THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE PROBLEM OF
THE ORIGIN AND EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION.
The more I search into the ancient history of the world, the more I am convinced
that the cultivated nations commenced with a purer -worship of the Supreme Be
ing ; that the magic influence of Nature upon the imaginations of the hitman race
afterward produced polytheism, and at length entirely obscured spiritual concep
tions of religion in the belief of the people . — A. W. VON SCHLEGEL.
La pretendue evolution de la vie sauvage, telle que la dtcrit Vecole naturaliste
en la considerant comme le premier degre du developpement de I"1 humanity a deux
grands defauts : elle part de trop bas, et elle s^eleve trap haut ; car il lui est im
possible d^expliquer les pr ogres qu'elle constate dans rhumanite, une fois qu'elle
la fait debuter par la bestialite complete. — E. DE PRESSENS&
THERE is another class of investigations of re
markable present interest, — investigations lying
partly in the anthropological and partly in the
theological field of research, — on which the discus
sions and results of the present treatise have a most
important bearing. They are the questions which
relate to the Origin, the Primordial Form, and the
true History of Religion.
Such light is greatly needed at the present time.
As we have seen, all the most ancient traditions of
the race represent mankind as having commenced
existence in a divine fellowship, and as having lost
this holy and blessed estate only through sin. This
view of the Origin of Religion has prevailed from
the beginning of traceable history among all nations
of the earth, varying only to such slight extent as
would permit polytheistic peoples to conceive of the
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 363
primeval divine fellowship polytheistically, and the
monotheistic peoples monotheistically. To a mono-
theist it is significant that several of the ancient
nations, representing widely differing races, as for
example the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Chi
nese, seem to have been more monotheistic in their
earliest traceable conceptions of religion than in
their later and latest creed and practice. But with
out dwelling upon this, it may be stated as a broad
and impressive fact that, with the exception of a few
speculative authors, nearly all of whom have lived
since the middle of the last century, the solid tra
ditional belief of the whole human family in every
age of the world has been that man began his exist
ence pure and sinless, and in conscious and intelli
gent divine communion.1 This is the pan-ethnic
no less than the Biblical doctrine of the Origin and
First Form of Religion among men.
It was remarked a moment ago that at the pres
ent time new light is greatly needed on this ques
tion. The need is special for the reason that for
about a hundred years past certain speculative
minds, oblivious of the early history of mankind, ig
noring the sacred books of all nations, despising the
consentaneous convictions of all peoples, and more
or less ridiculing the very idea on which religion
itself is based, — namely, the idea of the existence
and action of extra-human and super-human per
sonalities, — have undertaken to set aside the view
which we have above described as the pan-ethnic
doctrine of the Origin of Religion, and to substitute
1 Compare Lenormant, Beginnings of History, ch. ii. The Duke
of Argyll's Unity of Nature. London, 1884 : chapters xi., xii., and
xiii.
364 PARADISE FOUND.
for it some other explanation,- so framed as to make
it appear that religion originated from man himself,
apart from any divine manifestation, or teaching, or
impulse whatsoever. The result has been a succes
sion of crude speculations, inadequate in their prem
ises and contradictory in their respective conclu
sions. Professing unusual philosophic candor, aided
by the interest which always attends novel attempts
to set aside the beliefs of ages ; adapting themselves
to every class of readers, and especially to all the suc
cessively ruling fashions in non-religious and irrelig
ious current speculation, these writers have at last
not only wrought a perfect confusion in this portion
of the Philosophy of Religion, but have furthermore
so degraded and bestialized their readers' concep
tion of primitive humanity, and so outraged all prob
ability in their descriptions of primitive savagery,
that even from biological and sociological sides a
strong reaction has already set in.
It will be instructive briefly to review the history
of these speculations, and to note the successive
stages of ever-deepening error and the mutual con
tradiction of their much-admired results.
The first of them of any note was David Hume,
the English deist and champion of philosophic doubt.
In his " Natural History of Religion " (published in
1755), he lays down this as his first and fundamen
tal proposition : " Polytheism was the primary re
ligion of mankind."
His first argument in support of this thesis is an
appeal to the evidence of post-christian history. He
puts it thus : -
" It is a matter of fact, incontestable, that about
1700 years ago all mankind were polytheists. The
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 365
doubtful and skeptical principles of a few philoso
phers, or the theism — and that not entirely too pure
— of one or two nations, form no objection worth re
garding. Behold, then, the clear testimony of history.
The farther we mount into antiquity the more do we
find mankind plunged into polytheism. No marks, no
symptoms, of any more perfect religion. The most
ancient records of the human race still present us
with that system as the popular and established
creed. The North, the South, the East, the West,
give their unanimous testimony to the same fact.
What can be opposed to so full an evidence ? "
The force of this passage consists almost ex
clusively in its cool positiveness of dogmatic asser
tion. Plainly, the condition of the majority of man
kind 1700 years ago affords no just criterion by
which to judge of the condition of the race thou
sands of years before that. Indeed, to any believer
in historic evolution of any sort, it would seem an
tecedently certain that the condition of men several
thousand years after the commencement of their ex
istence must be very different indeed from their
primitive condition. But, furthermore, he grants
that 1700 years ago the prevalence of polytheism
was, after all, not universal ; there were " one or
two nations " of theists, and even philosophers in
other nations, who doubted the truth of polytheism.
It was absurd, therefore, to talk of " the unanimous
testimony " of North and South, East and West.
The second point urged by Hume is the improb
ability of the supposition that " a barbarous, ne
cessitous animal, such as man is, on the first origin
of society," a being " pressed by such numerous
wants and passions," should have had either the
366 PARADISE FOUND.
disposition, or the capacity, or the leisure, so to
study "the order and frame of the universe " as im
mediately to be led " into the pure principles of
theism." He grants that a careful and philosophic
consideration of the unity and order of the natu
ral world is sufficient to conduct one to an assured
belief in the being of one Supreme and Almighty
Creator, but he says, " I can never think that this
consideration could have an influence on mankind
when they formed their first rude notions of re
ligion." Assuming that the first men must nec
essarily have been " an ignorant multitude," he
says, —
" It seems certain that, according to the natural
progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude
must first entertain some groveling and familiar
notion of superior powers before they stretch their
conception to that perfect Being who bestowed order
on the whole frame of nature/'
The force of this argument it is difficult to see.
It all rests upon two assumptions: first, the assump
tion that the first men were the lowest barbarians, —
to use his own words, " barbarous, necessitous an
imals ; " and, secondly, the assumption that there
was, apart from the philosophic study of nature, no
other way in which they could have obtained a belief
in the existence of the Creator. As no religionist of
any age has ever admitted these assumptions, and
as Hume adduces no particle of proof for either of
them, this part of his argument is surely quite un
worthy of a professed philosopher.
His next and last point is the impossibility of the
loss of the monotheistic faith if it had once been
reached by the earliest men. He says, —
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 367
"If men were at first led into the belief of one
superior Being by reason-ing from the frame of na
ture, they could never possibly leave [have left] that
belief in order to embrace polytheism ; but the same
principles of reason which at first produced and dif
fused over mankind so magnificent an opinion must
be [have been] able, with greater facility, to pre
serve it. The first invention and proof of any doc
trine is much more difficult than the supporting and
retaining of it."
Here our author appears to even poorer advan
tage than in either of his former arguments. In
the first place, as before, he ignores the possibility
of supposing a knowledge of God by means of a di
vine self-manifestation, thus covertly misrepresent
ing or evading the only point in debate. In the sec
ond place, the assertion that if the first men had
attained to a pure theism they never could have left
it and become polytheists should be compared with
his own later assertions in Section viii. of the same
treatise, where he describes what he himself calls
the "Flux and Reflux of Polytheism and Theism."
This section opens thus : —
" It is remarkable that the principles of religion
have a kind of flux and reflux in the human mind,
and that men have a natural tendency to rise from
idolatry to theism, and to sink again from theism
into idolatry."
The author then states his well-known theory of
the origin of polytheism as the first form of religion,
and his theory of the rise of monotheism out of
polytheism. But when a people have thus reached
a belief in a God possessed of "the attributes of
unity and affinity, simplicity and spirituality," there
368 PARADISE FOUND.
comes — so he declares — a natural relapse into
polytheism. The explanation of this is given in
these words : —
" Such refined ideas [as those of pure monothe
ism], being somewhat disproportioned to vulgar com
prehension, remain not long in their original purity,
but require to be supported by the notion of inferior
mediators or subordinate agents, which interpose
between mankind and their supreme deity. These
demi-gods, or middle beings, partaking more of hu
man nature, and being more familiar to us, become
the chief objects of devotion. . . . But as these
idolatrous religions fall every day into grosser and
more vulgar corruptions, they at last destroy them
selves, and by the vile representations which they
form of their duties make the tide turn again toward
them."
Thus monotheism and polytheism are, to Hume,
two opposites, between which the human mind for
ever oscillates. This being so, it is plain that this
oscillation is grounded in reason, or it is not. If it
is grounded in reason, then primitive men may have
reasoned their way into monotheism as their first
religious faith, and still have relapsed into polythe
ism as the natural and rational reaction. On the
other hand, if the oscillation is not grounded in rea
son, then, as by his own account all later religious
states of mankind have been unreasonable, the first
may have been altogether different from what Hume
would have considered rational ; that is, may have
been a state of pure monotheism.
Such was Hume's attempted demonstration of
the primitiveness of polytheism, and the whole
of it.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 369
Five years later, in 1760, De Brosses, one of Vol
taire's correspondents, published his crude but note
worthy book on " The Worship of Fetiches ; or,
Parallel of the Ancient Religion of Egypt with the
Present Religion of Nigritia." This was the writer
who first gave currency to the word " fetichism,"
and who first postulated it as the invariable ante
cedent of polytheism. De Brosses, however, was a
professed believer in primeval divine revelation, and
he made the Hebrews an exception to his general
claim that all ancient nations began with fetichism,
rose thence to polytheism, and tended thence to
ward monotheism. In the early part of the present
century, however, Auguste Comte, ignoring any pri
meval revelation, elevated De Brosses' generaliza
tion into an absolute law of historic development.
He gave the greater plausibility and influence to it
by representing this law of theological progress as
only part of a yet broader social law, according to
which humanity, having traversed this " theological
stage " in the manner indicated, passes next through
a "metaphysical" one, and finally attains the "sci
entific " stage of atheistic positivism.
In Germany, in 1795, Hume's opinion found an
able representative in G. L. Bauer, of Altdorf, and
ten years later we see Meiners, in his " Universal
History of Religion," repeating and enforcing the
notion of the absolute primitiveness of fetichism.
The rationalistic and pantheistic tendencies of Ger
man speculation about this time were, of course,
favorable to any new theory which discredited the
Biblical one, and thus it came to pass that before
the middle of the present century the De Brosses
theory, in its completer Comtean form, became al-
24
370 PARADISE FOUND.
most universally adopted. Speaking of its preva
lence, Professor Max Miiller says: —
" All of us have been brought up on it. I myself
certainly held it for a long time, and never doubted
it till I became more and more startled by the fact
that, while in the earliest accessible documents of
religious thought we look in vain for any very clear
traces of fetichism, they become more and more fre
quent everywhere in the latter stages of religious
development, and are certainly more visible in the
later corruptions of the Indian religion, beginning
with the Atharvana, than in the earliest hymns of
the Rig Veda."1
For many years our works on primeval history
have been saturated with this idea. Even profess
edly Christian writers upon the History of Religions,
and upon Comparative Theology, have largely fallen
in with the prevailing notion. As one has well said,
"The very theory has become a kind of scientific
fetich, though like most fetiches it seems to owe its
existence to ignorance and superstition."
For some time past, however? this long dominant
dogma of naturalism has been losing credit with all
careful students of the world's religions, and indeed
with the more thorough professional ethnologists.
In his recent work, "The Hibbert Lectures on the
Origin and Growth of Religion," 2 Max Miiller, him
self for a long time, as we have seen, a believer in
the theory, publicly challenges its correctness. In
Lecture second, after rapidly sketching the rise and
remarkable prevalence of the theory, he exposes,
1 Origin and Growth of Religions. London and New York, 1879;
p. 58.
2 Reviewed by C. P. Tiele, in Theol. Tijdschrift, for May, 1879.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 371
with much acuteness and with his usual wealth of
illustrative facts, the indiscriminateness with which
the term fetichism has been currently used, and the
worthlessness of evidence upon which Comte and
others have relied. He sets forth, respectfully but
strongly, the inadequacy of their psychological ex
planation of the origin of fetichism, and shows that
even the West African fetich-worshipers hold at the
same time other views properly polytheistic, or, in
some cases, even monotheistic. Summing up his
own conclusions, he says, —
" The results at which we have arrived after ex
amining the numerous works on fetichism from the
days of De Brosses to our own time may be summed
up under four heads : —
" First. The meaning of the word fetich has re
mained undefined from its first introduction, and
has by most writers been so much extended that it
may include almost every symbolical or imitative
representation of religious objects.
" Second. Among people who have a history we
find that everything which falls under the category
of fetich points to historical and psychological ante
cedents. We are therefore not justified in suppos
ing that it has been otherwise among people whose
religious development happens to be unknown or
inaccessible to us.
" Third. There is no religion which has kept itself
entirely free from fetichism.
" Fourth. There is no religion which consists
entirely of fetichism." l
So able an expose of the shortcomings of the
fetichistic philosophy of the origin of religion, com-
1 Origin and Growth of Religions, p. 115.
372 PARADISE FOUND.
ing from the pen of a scholar so widely and deserv
edly revered, cannot fail to produce in the world of
general readers and second-hand writers a profound
and wholesome impression. Probably the work will
fail of becoming " epoch-making " solely in conse
quence of something for which the author is not re
sponsible, namely, the fact that in discussing to-day
this dogma of primitive fetichism one is really deal
ing with an issue which in advanced circles is al
ready dead. Even Mr. Andrew Lang, perhaps the
most antagonistic of all Professor Miiller's review
ers, is not himself willing to make fetichism the
" first ' moment ' in the development of religion." 1
Ten or fifteen years earlier the polemic would have
done many times the good it can now. During this
period a decided change has taken place. There re
mained a decade or two ago a further step, and but
one further step, for the advocates of the naturalistic
view of the origin of religion to take. Hume had
made polytheism the primitive faith ; Comte thought
to go back of this, and to postulate a still more ru
dimentary form as antedating polytheism. It re
mained to go back of fetichism, and predicate of the
first men absolute atheism. This various recent au
thors have done, prominent among whom, in Eng
land, is Sir John Lubbock. In chapter iv. of his
work, miscalled " The Origin of Civilization, and the
Primitive Condition of Man," 2 he classifies " the first
great stages of religious thought " as follows : —
First. Atheism ; " understanding by this term not
1 Custom and Myth. London, 1884: pp. 212-242.
2 The first edition was published in 1870. Later echoes are heard
in Mortillet, Le Prehistorique. See the Revue de FHistoire des Re
ligions. Paris, 1883: p. 117.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 373
a denial of the existence of a deity, but an absence
of any definite ideas on the subject."
Second. Fetichism. In the state of primeval athe
ism men were " not without a belief in invisible be
ings." They especially believed in human shadows,
ghosts, and the people seen in dreams, etc., though
these spirits were not conceived of as immortal, or
as possessing any supernatural powers. They were
feared only because they were supposed to have
power and disposition to inflict disease, or otherwise
to injure men yet in the flesh. Now, inasmuch as it
was believed that by means of the fetich these evil
spirits could be controlled and coerced to the will of
the worshiper, fetichism, viewed in its relation to
religious development, is pronounced by Lubbock
" a decided step in advance." Viewed in itself, " it
is mere witchcraft."
Third. Totemism, or Nature-worship. This our
author nowhere clearly distinguishes from fetich
ism. In this stage of religious progress, " the sav
age does not abandon his belief in fetichism, from
which, indeed, no race of men has yet entirely freed
itself, but he superinduces on it a belief in beings
of ~a higher and less material nature. In this stage
everything maybe worshiped, — trees, stones, riv
ers, mountains, the heavenly bodies, plants, and
animals."
Fourth. Shamanism. " As totemism overlies
fetichism, so does Shamanism overlie totemism."
Here the gods are conceived of as far more " power
ful than men," as " of a different nature," as residing
far away, and as " accessible only to the Shamans,"
who are " occasionally honored by the presence of
the deities, or are allowed to visit the heavenly
374 PARADISE FOUND.
regions." This in its turn is pronounced "a consid
erable advance " over the preceding stage of relig
ious thought.
Fifth. Idolatry, or Anthropomorphism. Here
"the gods take still more completely the nature of
men, being, however, more powerful. They are still
amenable to persuasion ; they are a part of Nature,
and not creators. They are represented by images
or idols."
Sixth. To the sixth stage no name is given ; but
it is described as one in which " the deity is re
garded as the author, not merely a part, of Nature.
He becomes for the first time a really supernatural
being."
Seventh. In this last and highest stage, which he
also leaves unchristened, morality becomes " for the
first time associated with religion." *
We will not stop to criticise in detail this ex
tremely confused and ill-named classification, or the
assumptions on which it rests. Its most character
istic feature is its postulation of universal primitive
atheism as antedating every form of religious devel
opment in our race. So far as he rested this dogma
either upon the affirmed absence of all religious be
liefs and usages among the lowest savages of to-day,
or upon the principle that the religious conceptions
of a people are always in exact proportion to its
degree of civilization, his refutation quickly began.
The next year after the publication of his work, in
a learned treatise on " Primitive Culture," E. B. Tylor
challenged several of Lubbock's authorities for the
statement that non-religious tribes have been found,
while in his new work on " The Human Species,"
1 Chaps, iv.-vi.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 3/5
1879, the learned and able Professor of Anthro
pology in the Paris Museum of Natural History,
Quatrefages, went yet further, not only maintaining
with Tylor that no atheistic tribe of savages has yet
been discovered, but also expressly denying the
proposition that elevation of religious conceptions
invariably corresponds to the elevation of a peo
ple in the scale of general civilization or knowl
edge of the arts. The fact that these objections to
the hypothesis of primitive atheism came, not from
theologians, but from scientific men, — from fellow-
students in the fields of anthropology and ethnology,
— gave them, with many, all the greater weight.1
The careful reader, however, cannot fail to see that
the only difference between Lubbock and some of his
critics is merely one of name, and not of thing ; that
the alleged primitive state which he calls atheistic
exactly answers to what Tylor and Darwin would
describe as the earliest form of animistic religion,
and to what Herbert Spencer would call the first
rudimentary beginnings of ghost and ancestor wor
ship. Nor can we fail to see that the consistent
Darwinian evolutionist must place the beginnings of
human history so near the plane of the brute-life as
to make it almost certain that its first stage was
truly non-theistic, if not, indeed, altogether non-re
ligious.
Precisely at this point notice should be taken of
the elaborate work of Otto Caspari, of Heidelberg,
entitled " Die Urgeschichte der Menschheit, mit
1 Professor Roskoff has done Mr. Lubbock the honor to take up
every tribe and people, in the extended list which the latter had
claimed as non-religious, and to exhibit in every case evidence of their
religious character. See his work, Das Religionswesen der rohesten
Naturvolker. Leipsic, 1880.
376 PARADISE FOUND.
Riicksicht auf die natiirliche Entwickelung des friihe-
sten Geisteslebens " (" The Primitive History of Man
kind, with Respect to the Natural Evolution of the
Earliest Spiritual Life)." This two-volumed treatise
was issued at Leipsic in 1872, and reached a second
edition in 1877. A very large portion of it is de
voted to the exposition of the author's view of the
origin and natural evolution of religion in the early
history of the race. This view is characterized
by an originality and elaborated with an ingenuity
which render the book as fascinating to the student
as the most absorbing romance. The author is a
pure and professed evolutionist, but instead of at
tempting to solve his problem with Lyell and Broca
from the data of Paleontology, or with Darwin and
Hackel from the data of Zoology, or with Huxley
and Bastian from the data of Biology, or with Miil-
ler and Noire from the data of Philology, or with
Prichard and Peschel from the data of Ethnology,
or with Tylor and Lubbock from the data of Cul
ture-History, or with Waitz and Topinard from the
data of General Anthropology, he approaches it and
grapples with it as a problem for that higher and
broader science to which all of the above are tribu
tary, — the science to which its German originators
have given the name Volker-Psy dialogic (Ethnic or
Anthropic Psychology). He cannot consider the
problem solved until, beginning with the psycholog
ical facts of brute-life, we are able to represent to
ourselves the successive steps and stages by which
the originally animal mind slowly evolved all the
spiritual and religious conceptions, emotions, habits,
and ideals of the historic and actual human race.
His own attempt to do this is not free from arbitrary
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 377
assumptions or inconsistencies, but, as a whole, it is
a marvel of subtile analysis and constructive ability.
In contrast with it the expositions of Hume and
Lubbock appear as clumsy and grotesque as the
early theories of geology, described in Goldsmith's
" Book of Nature," now look to the modern student
One of the oldest of the anti-supernaturalist ex
planations of the origin of religion is that which
ascribes it to the ignorant and superstitious fears oi
earliest men.
" Primus in orbe deos fecit timer,"
wrote Petronius, and Lucretius' fuller exposition of
the same notion is familiar. No such explanation
satisfies Caspari. He cannot conceive how fear could
ever become that compound of reverence and love
which is of the essence of religion. Fear simply
prompts the brute to shun, as far as may be, the
object feared. Equally unsatisfactory is the notion
that the heavenly bodies and the sublimer phenom
ena of nature inspired the awe and curious ques
tionings out of which religion could have grown.
The primitive man, like the anthropoid brute, took
no notice of the remote and lofty. Nothing had in
terest for him save that which was perceived to be
vitally related to him in the struggle for existence.
The range of his conceptions and of his sympathies
was limited to the objects which were his allies or
his enemies in this perpetual battle. Religion, there
fore, is not to be traced to any inworking of nature,
or of natural objects upon the human mind. It had
a deeper and yet more obvious genesis in natural hu
man relationships. The first and root form of all piety
was filial piety. The first object of truly religious
regard was the parent. This reverential and affec-
3/8 PARADISE FOUND.
tionate regard of the consciously ignorant, weak,
and dependent child for the indefinitely wise, strong,
and helpful father or mother is essentially religious.
At an extremely early date it must have become ex
tended from the parent to the all-defending and all-
regulating tribal chieftain, and to the aged and ex
perienced counselors of the rude primeval commu
nities. The natural tendency of uncivilized men to
gesture-language must have produced habitual forms
of rendering homage, — the germ of which we may
observe in the homage paid by the bees to their
queen, — and thus parents, chieftains, and sages were
the first objects of religious reverence and homage
among men. As yet men had no conceptions of
nature as a whole, no intellectual interest in stars, or
trees, or animals, no mental provocation to worship
anything else than "the ethically exalted" as it ap
peared in the narrow circle of the family and tribal
life. There was no thought of an unseen world, no
idea of souls, no proper conception even of death.
The dead man was supposed to be simply asleep, or
in a long swoon. Being self-evidently helpless for
the present, like a sick member of the family, he
called out natural pity and care. Food and drink
were placed in readiness against his awakening. If
he had to be left behind, he was put in a cave to
protect him against wild beasts, and his weapons
were left for his use.
On the basis of this nai've conception of things the
rise of animal worship first becomes conceivable.
The beast which has devoured a man, living or dead,
is now as much man as beast. The man has not
ceased to be ; he has simply blended his life in that
of the beast, and become a " man-beast." The feroc-
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 3/9
ity of the new compound is easily mistaken for an
angry wish on the part of the late man to take ven
geance on his relatives or associates for not having
more effectually protected him from the devouring
animal. But if the " man-beast " is human enough
to remember and avenge such real or supposed neg
lects on the part of his late friends, he must be hu
man enough to recognize and appreciate any well-
meant attempts to appease his anger and propitiate
his favor. Hence a natural basis, not for universal
animal worship, but for the worship of the more
common carnivora, and these Caspari endeavors to
show were the first that attained such distinction.
Here, also, is found the origin of cannibalism.
A man has killed his foe. If he leaves him merely
dead he will some time come to life again as bad as
ever. If haply before this some wild beast devour
him, he will then become a ferocious and malevo
lent " man-beast," — a worse enemy than before.
There is no way of making the victory final and se
cure, except by eating him up one's self. Then the
life and valor of the slain become life and valor
to the slayer. Even the eating of others than foes
is in this way made intelligible. As the Fan Ne
groes are said to eat — " with a certain tenderness "
— the bodies of their wives and children, so the
primitive man, seeking the safest possible place for
the body of his dead friend, may have thought it a
far friendlier act to eat him up than to leave him to
take his chances at the hand of worms underground,
or beasts of prey above it. Between the two mo
tives, the desire to appropriate the vital forces of
the foe and the wish to do the best possible thing
for the unwakable friend, our author thinks that
380 PARADISE FOUND.
anthropophagy became in the first age of the world
almost universal. The very piety of the surviving
toward the dead contributed to the dissemination of
the revolting custom.
Our limits will not permit an equally full account
of the remaining stages by which religion grew to be
what it has been and is in the world. Suffice to say
that possible millenniums from the beginning of
human history " toward the end of the Stone Age,"
there occurred the greatest revolution in human
thought and belief and life which the race has yet
witnessed. This was brought about by the rise and
adoption of the belief that trees and men and beasts
— in fine, all natural objects — are possessed of
invisible, impalpable, vital principles, souls. That
which produced and supported this strange, new no
tion was a discovery which, estimated by the breadth
and profoundness of its influence, must be placed at
the head of all others, — the discovery, namely, of
the art of kindling fire. This mysterious and novel
power of evoking what seemed a bright and living
being from the realm of the invisible, by means of
the "fire-drill," half bewildered even the priestly
caste, in whose hands the awful secret lay. Their
attempts to use it led to Shamanism and a sincere
magic. By means of the observed vital heat of
living things and the coldness of the dead the new
element was quickly identified with the inner es
sence of life itself, and the new art the more com
mended to universal attention by means of its be
neficent applications in the hands of the Flamens,
or Fire-priests, to the purposes of healing. The
same identification of heat and life soon associated
phallus and fire-drill, and introduced the strange and
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 381
apparently monstrous aberration of phallic worship.
Under these new ideas it was only natural that sun
and star and lightning flash should come to have a
new significance for man, and make their impress
on religion. Animal worship was profoundly mod
ified in ways ingeniously set forth. The simple
oblations of the earlier period give place to sacri
fices to fire, and to the heavenly bodies. So strong
is the desire to become transformed into white,
flaming spirits, and to be joined to the supernal
fellowship of such, that men bring themselves as
offerings, and seek transfiguration in the holy altar
flames. Hence human sacrifices ; hence also in
cremation of the dead. In time, the idea of the
soul takes on greater and greater definiteness ; so
also the idea of the immaterial supersensual gods.
The long-continued stimulation of the imagination
renders myth-constructions possible. Some of the
great priesthoods of history invent hieroglyphic and
alphabetic writing, and in time there naturally fol
low sacred books, cosmogonies, codes of religious
laws, etc., etc. The magic wand of the first fire-
bringer has at last created a spiritual and unseen
counterpart to the world which is seen. In this
enchanted world we live to-day ; the lowest of us
showing our faith by superstitious fetichism, the
highest of us by attempts at a purely spiritual wor
ship. That highest Christian conception, " God is
light, and in Him is no darkness at all," is simply
the culmination of a mode of thinking which started
ages ago with the spark which some savage prehis
toric flint-chipper struck out of the flinty stone.1
1 Very similar to Caspari's view is that set forth by Professor J.
Frohschammer in his late work, Die Genesis der Menschheit. Miinchen,
1883: pp. 68-38 1.
382 PARADISE FOUND.
The brevity of this sketch of Caspari's theory ren
ders it impossible to do full justice to the skill and
plausibility with which he has elaborated it. Still
less have we space for that detailed review which
would be needed were we to undertake a refutation
of the scheme in part or whole.
In striking opposition to the theory of Caspari
stands that of Jules Baissac, elaborated in his " Ori-
gines de la Religion." 1 He, too, begins with primi
tive animality, and proposes to trace the rise and
natural evolution of religion from that far-off start
ing-point of the human race. But, instead of mag
nifying the initial influence of a pure domestic life
in Caspari's truly German method, Baissac — in a
manner characteristically French, shall we say ? —
starts with a deification of mere maternity, con
ceived of as self-originating and self-sufficing. This
form of religion prevailed during the remote period
anterior to the time when it was discovered that
males had any participation in the procreation of the
species. The religious symbols of that far-off age
were " les elevations et tumescences terrestres, natu-
relles ou artificielles, et les cavites souterraines ; les
tumescences comme image du sein maternel en etat
de pregnation et les profondeurs et cavites comme
ventre sacr£ de la divine mere. De la le culte des
ballons ou montagnes a croupe arrondie ; de la le
symbolisme des tumuli, des pyramides, des grottes,
des puits, des labyrinthes, des dolmens." In this
period all motherhood is divine, and all life and
change in nature are mentally represented as a
spontaneous, and exclusively female, conceiving and
bringing forth.
1 Paris, 2 tomes, 1877. Compare Baring-Gould, Religious Belief.
New York, 1870: Part I., pp. 411-414.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 383
In the second period, which is still anterior to the
idea of marriage and to the establishment of the
idea of personal property or individual rights, the
function of the male principle has been discovered ;
and now Nature, the divine mother, is conceived of
as analogous to a woman of the period, — a mother
fecundated only by male energy, but by male energy
from any quarter. To use Baissac's own terms, she
is a " prostituee divine, ayant son symbole dans la
terre ouverte a tous les germes." 1
In the third period the two principles are brought
into a relation of equality, and now the divine be
comes hermaphrodite.
In the fourth the male principle is given priority,
the religious symbols of maternity give place to the
phallic symbols, the institutions of marriage and
property arise, the power of atmospheric and celes
tial divinities begins to supersede that of earth-
spirits. The fifth stage is marked by the entire
predominance of these celestial divinities and the
definite rejection of the ancient chthonian and sub
terranean powers. In the sixth comes the final
separation of the Heaven and the Earth, the idea of
creation, and the idea of an almighty and transcend
ent Creator of all things.
The manner in which the author elaborates this
remarkable interpretation of the history and symbol
ism of religion, through two octavo volumes of 300
pages each, is as ingenious as it is disgusting.
Behold the savory outcome of these successive
philosophic and scientific rebellions against history !
And whom of all these wise men of the West shall
we follow ? The first form of religion, says one of
1 Origines, p. 131.
384 PARADISE FOUND.
them, was an animal hallucination of the early an
thropoids respecting sexual generation. No, says
another, it was a genuine worship of invisible gods
and goddesses, like the beautiful Olympian divini
ties of Greece, — a religion whose fruits in character
and conduct compare most favorably with those of
Christian monotheism.1 Absurd ! exclaims a third.
" Polytheism " is a very high type of religion ; men
never could have reached that until after the inven
tion of the fire-drill, nobody knows how many ages
from the beginning. Fools all! rejoin the more
thorough-going. Know ye not that primitive men
were far lower than our lowest modern savages, — as
incapable of any religious ideas as they were of us
ing the integral calculus ?
At the beginning of the exposition of these specu
lations it was intimated that their contradictory and
incredible outcome had already provoked a degree
of reaction even from biological and sociological
writers. This reaction is too instructive to leave
unnoticed.2 It comes from men who, religiously or
theologically speaking, seem in full sympathy with
the rejecters of the old Biblical and pan-ethnic faith ;
but they find they cannot go along with these re
jecters without surrendering more than any biol
ogist or sociologist can afford to surrender if he
would maintain a credible philosophy of the history
of man and of human society. To a simple disciple
of history the spectacle of their embarrassment and
of their attempts at extrication is in an eminent
degree entertaining. Indeed, the best refutation of
whatever is wrong in all these new conceptions of
1 Hume's above-cited Essay, closing sections.
2 Compare Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1880, pp. 660-665.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 38$
primordial religion will be found, not in a blind and
indiscriminate polemic against them en masse, but
in showing how every departure from the traditional
conception involves the careful thinker in perplex-
ing if not insoluble problems, and how easily all the
real facts on which these proposed departures are
based can be arrayed in support of the traditional
conception. To this task we turn.
First, then, according to Genesis, the earliest rep
resentatives of the human race began their exist
ence in Paradise unclad, unhoused, and possessed
of none of the outward and visible signs of what
is called civilization. Had Mr. Lubbock been per
mitted at the time to visit the spot, he would have
seen — so far as Moses suggests — no printing-press,
no power-loom, perhaps not even a "fire-drill" or
flint " arrow-head." He would have seen no god,
no Miltonic guard of angels, no Eden gates, no tem
ple or altar. He would have noticed in the luxu
riant tropical landscape simply a wealth of grace
ful animal forms, rising in manifold gradations, and
culminating in two fair human figures. He would
doubtless have gone his way, and reported at the
next meeting of the Anthropological Society the
discovery of a new Otaheite, whose naked and art
less inhabitants were evidently at the bottom of the
scale as respects " culture," and in the sub-fetichis-
tic " atheistic stage " as respects religion. So do
ing, he would have committed no greater blunder
than many of his favorite reporters have made in
describing such people as the Andaman Islanders.1
1 For the complete vindication of this statement see Sir Henry
Sumner Maine, Early Law and Custom, London, 1883, pp. 229-231 ;
Quatrefages, The Human Species, New York, 1879, chap. xxxv. ; and
25
386 PARADISE FOUND.
According to the old conception, no less than ac
cording to the new, the arts were only gradually
developed. Men were destitute of the art of metal-
working and of all to which that was essential until
the days of Tubal Cain. Musical instruments there
were none until invented by Jubal. Everything in
sacred Scripture indicates the kind of social and
industrial progress for which, in connection with
the beginnings of human society, one would natu
rally look.
So far, then, the believer in Sacred History has no
occasion whatever to disagree with the believer in
Natural History. Hackel and Peschel and Caspari
hold, with Moses, to the monogenesis of the race,
and even place their imaginary "Lemuria" just
under the northern portion of the Indian Ocean,
hard by one of the traditional seats of Eden. Their
account of man's migrations from that centre, and
of his primeval destitution of the arts, conflict with
no fact recorded in Holy Scripture. Neither party
can tell precisely how long the period antecedent to
the rise of the first great historic civilizations of
Asia, Egypt, and Greece lasted, and neither can tell
how long ago it terminated, so that even in their
confessed ignorances both are in accord.
But, secondly, the believer in Sacred History, He
brew or Ethnic, cannot accept the eagerly advocated
notion that the intellectual condition of the earliest
men was not higher than that of the lowest savages
of to-day. Ignorant of many things those earliest
generations must have been, but it is equally certain
especially Roskoff, Das Religionswesen derrohesten Naturvolker, Leip-
sic, 1880, and Reville, Les Religions des Peuples non-civilisfc, Paris,
1883, torn, i., ch. i.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 38?
that they must have been above the line which sep
arates stationary or retrograding peoples from pro
gressive ones. They were men capable of investigat
ing the powers and laws of nature, of originating
arts absolutely new in the history of the world, and
of making successive inventions which revolution
ized the social state.
With this representation we should expect the
Darwinian, on sober second thought, to agree. For
it is a well-known fact that our lowest savages are
dying out, while the men who peopled the world in
accordance with the law of the survival of the fittest,
at a period in the earth's history when, in important
respects, according to Darwin, the environment was
less favorable to the human struggle for existence
than now, must have been superior to these de
generating and vanishing tribes. And as all evo
lutionists, in enumerating the qualities which win
in the struggle for existence, lay great stress upon
superior intellectual endowments, it is only a nat
ural inference that the native intelligence of the
earliest men was at least superior to that of the low
est modern savage. Turning to the writers in ques
tion we find our antecedent expectations confirmed.
Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer, in one of his matur-
est works, expresses himself as follows : " There
are sundry reasons for suspecting that existing men
of the lowest types, forming social groups of the
simplest kinds, do not exemplify men as they origi
nally were. Probably most of them, if not all of
them, had ancestors in higher states, and among
their beliefs remain some which were evolved dur
ing those higher states. . . . There is inadequate
warrant for the notion that the lowest savagery has
388 PARADISE FOUND.
always been as low as it is now. . . . That supplant
ing of race by race, and thrusting into corners such
inferior races as are not exterminated, which is now
going on so actively, and which has been going on
from the earliest recorded times, must have been
ever going on. And the implication is that remnants
of inferior races, taking refuge in inclement, barren,
and otherwise unfit regions, have retrograded." l
In like manner Darwin himself conceives of the
first men as capable of rising in thought above the
knowledge furnished by the senses, as able to repre
sent to themselves the unseen and spiritual. And he
expressly calls their mental faculties " high," say
ing, " The same high mental faculties which first
led men to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then
in fetichism, polytheism, and ultimately in monothe
ism, would infallibly lead him, so long as his reason
ing powers remained poorly developed, to various
strange superstitions and customs." 2 Thus Darwin
justly considers the character of the very aberra
tions of the human intellect in its infantile stage a
striking proof of the loftiness of its powers.
Lubbock ascribes to the earliest men a like ability
to conceive of the supersensual and to govern them
selves largely by ideals. Though sometimes de
scribing the primitive generations as in a state of
"utter barbarism," or as having been " no more ad
vanced than the lowest savages of to-day," this
seems to occur only by inadvertence ; for in the later
editions of his already quoted work, " The Origin
of Civilization," page 483, he expressly admits and
asserts that he does not regard cannibals as repre-
1 Principles of Sociology, pp. 106-109.
2 Descent of Man, vol. i., p. 66.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 389
sentatives of the first men.1 On the same page he
says, " It may be as well to state emphatically that
all brutal customs are not, in my opinion, primeval.
Human sacrifices, for instance, were, I think, cer
tainly not so."
Caspari no less emphatically affirms that the so
cial state of the North American Indians and of the
Australians is not primitive, but a result of degen
eration. He says, " We know a succession of such
tribes, of which, in fact, only ausgeartete verkommene
Banden und staatliche Splitter remain in existence,
who, wild and savage, wander about in the primitive
forests, miserably to perish." 2
Tylor takes the same general ground, maintaining
that the best representatives of primitive men are
not the lowest but "the higher" of the uncivilized
races. Thus he says, " In a study of the nature-
myths of the world it is hardly practicable to start
from the conceptions of the very lowest human
tribes, and to work upward from thence to fictions of
higher growth : partly because our information is
meagre as to the beliefs of these shy and seldom
quite intelligible folk, and partly because the legends
they possess have not reached the artistic and sys
tematic shape which they attain to among races next
higher in the scale. It therefore answers better
1 Let us hope that it is by a like inadvertence, merely, that Profes
sor Sayce speaks of " the savage tribes of the modern world, and the
still more savage tribes among whom the languages of the earth took
their start." Introdtiction to the Science of Language, vol. ii., p. 31.
Compare p. 269, where, speaking of the mythopoeic man, whom he
considers a considerable advance on the primitive savage, the profes
sor says, " He had not yet learned to distinguish between the lifeless
and the living ; " " he had not yet realized that aught existed which
his senses could not perceive."
2 Vol.i.,p. 113.
390 PARADISE FOUND.
to take as a foundation the mythology of the North
American Indians, the South Sea Islanders, and
other high savage tribes who best represent in mod
ern times the early mythological period of human
history" 1
In chapter ii. of the same work he presents the
evidence that many of the very lowest tribes of the
modern world have become what they are by degen
eration.
But, thirdly, if the best representatives of the
first men must be sought, not among the lowest, but
rather among the higher, of the uncivilized peoples,
then surely we are justified in rejecting the notion
of all those writers who, since the time of De
Brosses and Comte, have maintained that primitive
men personified and vitalized and fetichized all natu
ral objects about them.
On this point the author of the " Outlines of
Cosmic Philosophy" is less clear-sighted than his
master, Herbert Spencer. Boldly and ably as he
criticises Comte in some other particulars, in this
Mr. Fiske surrenders to him wholly. He says, "We
may safely assert, with Comte, that the earliest atti
tude assumed by the mind in interpreting nature
was a fetichistic attitude." 2 Spencer, however, rec
ognizing the fact that the lower mammals, birds, and
even insects are able to distinguish animate from
inanimate objects, and that to deny this capacity to
the first men would be to make them less and lower
than animals, commits himself unreservedly to the
view in harmony with that of the Biblical record.
Quoting the stock examples of savages who, on
1 Primitive Culture, vol. i., p. 321.
2 Vol. i., p. 178, et passim.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 391
first seeing a watch or a compass, imagined that
it was alive, he shows the naturalness of the mis
take, and very properly says : " We must exclude
these mistakes made in classing things which ad
vanced arts have made to simulate living things,
since such things mislead the primitive man in ways
unlike those in which he can be misled by the natu
ral objects about him. Limiting ourselves to his
conceptions of these natural objects, we cannot but
conclude that his classification of them into animate
and inanimate is substantially correct. Concluding
this, we are obliged to diverge at the outset from
certain interpretations currently given of his super
stitions. The assumption, tacit or avowed, that the
primitive man tends to ascribe life to things which
are not living is clearly an untenable assumption.
Consciousness of the difference between the two,
growing ever more definite as intelligence evolves,
must be in him more definite than in all lower crea
tures. To suppose that without cause he begins to
confound them is to suppose the process of evolu
tion inverted." 1
This writer, therefore, whom Darwin in one pas
sage calls "our great philosopher," explicitly rejects
the dogma of the primitiveness and universality
of animism and fetichism among the earliest men.
According to him, animistic and fetichistic beliefs
were not " primary beliefs ; " they were errors into
which " the primitive man was betrayed during his
early attempts to understand the surrounding world."
" The primitive man no more tends to confound
animate with inanimate than inferior creatures do "
(p. 146).
1 Principles of Sociology, pp. 143, 144.
392 PARADISE FOUND.
Caspar!, too, as we have seen, denies to fetichism
a primitive character.1 Ascribing its rise to the
new ideas which the discovery of the art of fire-kin
dling produced, he makes the worship of u the mor
ally exalted " (des sittlich Erhabenen}, represented
by the personal father, the tribal chieftain, and the
deceased ancestor, far older, possibly thousands of
years older, than any worship of fetiches. With
Lubbock there is no moral element in religion until
it reaches its last and highest stage. With Caspari,
on the contrary, religion is essentially moral in its
first emergence, and has from the first moment of
its existence an actual and relatively worthy per
sonal object. This is a prodigious scientific advance
from the" positions of Hume, Comte, Lubbock, and
all their followers, and by postulating a high moral
nature and moral life at the very beginnings of hu
man history it renders the Biblical conception of
those beginnings not only conceivable, but even an
tecedently probable.
Fourthly. The Bible and the sacred traditions of
nearly all peoples present monogamy as the first
form of marriage, ascribing all deviations from it to
the ungoverned selfish passions of men. This view,
Lubbock and the writers whom he has followed,
McLennan and Morgan, emphatically reject. These
theorists claim that among the first men the late
1 Compare the like utterance of Frohshammer : " Mit Fetischismus
hat das Gottesbewusstsein und religiose Cultus nicht begonnen." Die
Genesis der Menschheit. Miinchen, 1883: p. 71. Also, the recent
declaration of a learned Professor of Roman Law : " Die religiose
Anschauung aller Volker ist, denke ich, ausgegangen von dem Glau-
ben an Einen gottlichen Willen, welcher liber Allen und zu Oberst
waltet." J. E. Kuntze, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Roms. Leipsic,
1882 : p. 23.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 393
Oneida Community system of " complex marriage,"
or, as Lubbock calls it, " communal marriage," uni
versally obtained. The appropriateness of the term
marriage is very far from clear. The first communi
ties were mere herds, in which all the women were
"wives" to all the men. In McLennan's opinion
" the next stage was that form of polyandry in which
brothers had their wives in common ; afterward came
that of the levirate, i. e., the system under which,
when an elder brother died, his second brother mar
ried the widow, and so on with the others in suc
cession. Thence he considered that some tribes
branched off into endogamy, others into exogamy ;
that is to say, some forbade marriage out of, others
within, the tribe. If either of these two systems
was older than the other, he held that exogamy must
have been the more ancient. Exogamy was based
on infanticide, and led to the practice of marriage
by capture. Lubbock, on the contrary, believes
that the communal marriage, which he assumes to
have been the primitive form, " was gradually super
seded by individual marriage founded on capture,"
and that this led, first, to exogamy, and then to
female infanticide, thus reversing Mr. McLennan's
order of sequence. " Endogamy and regulated poly
andry, though frequent," he says, " I regard as ex
ceptional and as not entering into the normal prog
ress of development." 1 Still different is the theory
of Bachofen, set forth in his work entitled " Das
Mutterrecht." Assuming sexual promiscuity as the
primordial state, he considers that under this system
the women, instead of being rendered more and
1 Origin of Civilization, pp. 94, 95. Compare D. McLennan, The
Patriarchal Theory. London, 1884 : P- 355-
394 PARADISE FOUND.
more debauched and corrupted by the practice, as
we might suppose, became on the contrary, in pro
cess of time, so refined, that after a season they felt
shocked and scandalized by the beastly state of
things, revolted against it, and established a system
of marriage with female supremacy, the husband be
ing subject to the wife, property and descent being
required to follow the female line, and women enjoy
ing the principal share of political power.
Gradually, however, the more spiritual ideas asso
ciated with fatherhood prevailed over the more ma
terial ideas associated with motherhood. The father
came to be considered the real author of life to the
offspring, the mother a mere nurse ; property and
descent were traced in the male line, sun-worship
superseded moon-worship, men absorbed all political
power, — in a word, as primitive " Hetairismus" was
followed by the " Mother-Law " system, so this now
gave way to the modern social state.
The chief evolutionist authorities disagreeing so
widely on this point, it is surely proper to look fur
ther. So doing, we find a number of at least equally
respectable, scientific and speculative representa
tives of the evolutional school, who expressly ques
tion, if they do not openly reject, the dogma of uni
versal sexual promiscuity as the primeval social state.
Thus Herbert Spencer argues through many pages
of his " Principles of Sociology " against McLennan,
claiming that monogamy must be conceived of as
going back to the beginning. However unsettled
social and sexual relations then were, " promiscuity,"
he affirms, "was checked by the establishment of in
dividual connections prompted by men's likings, and
maintained against other men by force" (p. 665),
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 395
Again he says, " The impulses which lead primitive
men to monopolize other objects of value must lead
them to monopolize women " (p. 664). And again,
" Monogamy dates back as far as any other marital
relation " (p. 698). Darwin takes substantially the
same view, positively discrediting the alleged sexual
promiscuity of the earliest communities.1
In like manner another of the latest of English
writers on this subject, James A. Farrer, in his book
entitled " Primitive Manners and Customs," 2 em
phatically rejects the notion that a brutal and forci
ble bride-capturing was ever universal, and denies
that the customs relied upon by McLennan and
others to prove its prevalence are to be viewed as
a survival of such a custom. As to the absolutely
first form of marriage he does not express an opin
ion, but the theory of primitive monogamy would
better agree with his general representation than
any other. The same may be said of Caspari, who,
though he does not expressly postulate the priority
of monogamy, yet ascribes to filial piety a role in
the first origination of religion which seems to ne
cessitate such a postulate.3 So Mr. John Fiske's
suggestion that the transition from the anthropoid
animals to truly human beings was probably effected
by the prolongation of infancy and of parental care
incident to the slower evolution of a highly complex
organism, and by the family life thus necessitated
and brought about, is more harmonious with the
doctrine of primitive monogamy than with any other.
It would not be surprising, therefore, if this class of
1 Descent of Man, vol. ii., pp. 362-367.
2 London, 1879.
8 See vol. i., pp. 322, 358, 367.
396 PARADISE FOUND.
considerations, which we meet again in Noire' s the
ory of the origin of language, should gradually lead
to such a reconstruction of Darwinistic sociology as
will postulate monogamy as the one and only form
of sexual relation by virtue of which man could have
arisen out of the lower and preceding animal orders.
Mr. Spencer calls Mr. Fiske's suggestion " an im
portant " one, and he explains it in a note appended
to a significant declaration respecting the biological
and sociological value of monogamy (p. 630). Else
where, after stating that " irregular relations of the
sexes are at variance with the welfare of the society,
of the young and of the adults," and after ascribing
the gradual dying out of the Andamanese to their
promiscuity of sexual relation,1 he says, "We may
infer that the progeny of such unions (as had a de
gree of exclusiveness and durability) were more
likely to be reared and more likely to be vigorous "
(p. 669). Again, a page or two later, he uses this
language : " As under ordinary conditions the rear
ing of more numerous and stronger offspring must
have been favored by more regular sexual relations,
there must on the average have been a tendency for
those societies most characterized by promiscuity to
disappear before those less characterized by it " (p.
671). But Spencer himself must grant that in the
earliest ages, upon the whole, the race multiplied
and spread from generation to generation, so that we
must at least conclude from his own declaration,
that the approximately monogamous societies and
1 Mr. E. H. Man's recent paper on the Andaman Islanders (The
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xii., i. 69, and ii. 13) de
nies the alleged sexual promiscuity, and illustrates the worthlessness
of much of the evidence on which popular ethnographers rely.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 397
unions were more numerous than the approximately
promiscuous ones. Well, therefore, may Mr. Lang,
our latest advocate of McLennan's theory, concede
the possibility that " man originally lived in the pa
triarchal or monogamous family," and seek to con
tent his fellow sociologists with the assurance that
" if there occurred a fall from the primitive family,
and if that fall was extremely general, affecting even
the Aryan race, Mr. McLennan's adherents will be
amply satisfied." J
Fifthly. The Bible represents the earliest men as
capable of entertaining the conception of a supreme
Divine Being, the Maker of the heavens and earth,
the Creator and rightful Lord of men. It represents
them as capable of realizing the moral obligation of
obedience to the Creator, and as possessed of free
dom to obey or to disobey. It gives us to understand
that, as a matter of fact, a few then as now were
faithful to their light and to their convictions of
duty, while the greater part lived in conscious vio
lation of the promptings of their own consciences.
As a natural consequence immoralities multiplied :
these demoralized and brutalized those who practiced
them. Then demoralized and brutalized parents
were followed by children less well instructed and
less well endowed than they themselves had been,
and so, despite exceptional men and exceptional fam
ilies who were more faithful to conscience, the gen
eral demoralization went on. The song of Lamech,
Gen. iv. 23, 24, is the song of a true savage, though
of one who has known the law of right and duty.
One can hardly read it without imagining it first
sung in a kind of domestic war-dance in the hut of
1 Custom and Myth. London, 1884: pp. 246-248.
39^ PARADISE FOUND.
its polygamous author. He glories in his homicides,
and evidently belongs to those who with savage lust
and brutality " took them wives of all which they
chose." He was a representative of his Cainite kin
dred. By the mass of these and those who inter
married with them the Father and Lord of all crea
tures was ignored and gradually misconceived, and
at last superseded by creations of man's own disor
dered mind and heart, until the pure primitive relig
ion of the righteous patriarchs became a false wor
ship as irrational and immoral as the mass of those
who gave themselves to its loathsome and cruel
practices. With some populations this abnormal
and immoral evolution proceeded to thoroughly un
natural and self-destructive results, such as religious
prostitution, sodomy, human sacrifices, cannibalism,
etc. On the other hand, then as now, fidelity to
truth and goodness led its possessor to larger knowl
edge and to higher spiritual experiences. Then as
ever the principle held good, "To him that hath
shall be given." Hence alongside and within and
above the historic evolution of a large portion of the
race from evil to evil there was another evolution of
a smaller but more vital portion from good to good.
If Satan's kingdom steadily unfolded, so did also the
kingdom of God. And while the one was in the
direction of spiritual and physical degeneration and
death, the other was in the direction of life and ulti
mate spiritual ascendency. Both of these partial or
special evolutions were within and part of the uni
versal evolution of the race under its preestablished
nature and conditions, one of which fundamental
conditions is its immanency in the Divine. Such is
the picture presented us by all the monotheistic re-
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 399
ligions of the world, and it is substantially confirmed
by most of the ancient traditions of the human race.
Now in all this there is nothing inconsistent with
any well-established facts or principles of science.
Some authorities which Lubbock himself quotes
prove not only that uncivilized tribes are capable of
entertaining the theistic conception of the world,
but also that not a few of them when first found
actually possessed remarkably high and pure con
ceptions of the Supreme Spirit and of man's rela
tion to him. Thus he cites Livingstone as saying
that " the uncontaminated African believes that the
Great Spirit lives above the stars." In trying to
prove the absence of prayer among certain savages,
he admits witnesses who show that the Esquimos,
the North American Indians, and the Caribs be
lieved in the existence of a Supreme Spirit, the
" Master of Life." He even quotes the following
objection to prayer made by Tomochichi, the chief
of the Yamacraws, to General Oglethorpe, to wit :
" That the asking of any particular blessing looked
to him like directing God ; and if so, that it must
be a very wicked thing. That for his part he thought
everything that happened in the world was as it
should be ; that God of himself would do for every
one what was consistent with the good of the whole ;
and that our duty to him was to be content with
whatever happened in general, and thankful for all
the good that happened in particular." What civil
ized religionist, what purest monotheist, ever appre
hended or expressed this theological problem more
clearly than did this Indian chief? Lubbock quotes
another author as saying that the Caribs considered
the Great Spirit as endowed with so great good-
4OO PARADISE FOUND.
ness that he does not take revenge even on his ene
mies.1
So Mr. Tylor allows not only that most barbarians
are able to conceive of a Creator, but also that they
actually believe in one. He says : —
"Races of North and South America, of Africa,
of Polynesia, recognizing a number of great deities,
are usually and reasonably considered polytheists,
yet their acknowledgment of a Supreme Creator
would entitle them at the same time to the name of
monotheists," if belief in a Supreme Deity, held to
be the Creator of the world and chief of the spiritual
hierarchy, were the sufficient criterion of monothe
ism. " High above the doctrine of souls, of divine
manes, of local nature-spirits, of the great deities of
class and element, there are to be discerned in sav
age theology shado wings, quaint or majestic, of the
conception of a Supreme Deity." 2
He illustrates the prevalence of this conception
by facts related of barbarous peoples in almost
every quarter of the globe. Speaking of the re
markable clearness of this idea and belief among
the New Zealanders, the Hawaiians, the Tongans,
Samoans, and other representatives of the Polyne
sian race, he says : —
" Students of the science of religion who hold
polytheism to be but the misdevelopment of a
primal idea of divine unity, which in spite of cor
ruption continues to pervade it, might well choose
this South Sea Island divinity as their aptest illus
tration from the savage world." 3
1 Origin of Civilization, pp. 374, 375.
2 Primitive Culture, vol. ii., p. 332.
8 Compare Quatrefages, pp. 486-495
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 401
He quotes Moerenhout as saying : —
" Taaroa is their supreme, or rather only, God ;
for all the others, as in other known polytheisms,
seem scarcely more than sensible figures and im
ages of the infinite attributes united in his divine
person."
He adds the following sublime native description
of this Supreme God : —
" He was ; Taaroa was his name ; he abode in the
void. No earth, no sky, no men. Taaroa calls, but
naught answers ; and alone existing he became the
universe" (p. 345).
Though an outspoken opponent of the theory that
polytheism arose from moral and spiritual degenera
tion, his own facts are so strong that for the expla
nation of some of them he is constrained to resort
to it. Speaking of the "conceptions of the Supreme
Deity in the savage and barbaric world," he says,
" The degeneration theory may claim such beliefs
as mutilated and perverted remnants of higher re
ligions, in some instances no doubt with justice."
That a religion originally good and pure may de
generate and become corrupt is conceded even by
Lubbock. At the close of his sketch of " the low
est intellectual stages through which religion has
passed," he uses this significant language : —
" I have stopped short sooner, perhaps, than I
should otherwise have done, because the worship of
personified principles, such as Fear, Love, Hope,
etc., could not have been treated apart from that of
the Phallus, or Lingam, with which it was so inti
mately associated in Greece, India, Mexico, and else
where ; and which, though at first modest and pure,
• — as all religions are in their origin, — led to such
26
4O2 PARADISE FOUND.
abominable practices that it is one of the most pain
ful chapters in human history." l
Reading this, the disciple of history simply asks,
If men could so corrupt the originally modest and
pure worship of Aphrodite, why not also the origi
nally pure worship of El ?
Sixthly. The disclosure of the Arctic Eden solves
all further difficulties in the Hebrew conception of
the religious development of mankind.
This doctrine as to the cradle of the race con
cedes to the devotee of prehistoric archaeology all his
claims as to the lowly beginnings of every historic
civilization developed in our postdiluvian seats of
humanity. It welcomes every revelation which fossil
bone, or chipped flint, or lacustrine pile, or sepul
chral mound has ever made, finding in it precious
illustration of those " times of ignorance " through
which our expatriated race has made its passage
(Acts xvii. 30; Rom. i. 18-32). It is equally ready
for every conclusion of the scientific anthropologist.
By his own doctrine of the power of environment,
and by his own picture of Mammalian life in Ter
tiary and Quaternary times, it constrains him to
admit that if the Eden of Genesis was at the Pole,
the Biblical picture of Antediluvian Man, with his
extraordinary vigor and stature and longevity, with
his extraordinary defiance of the authority of God,
and with his extraordinary persistence in the in
dulgence of self-centred passions and appetites and
ambitions, is credible in the highest degree. And
that nothing may be lacking to its perfect confirma
tion, the comparative mythologist discovers that in
this new Eden he is given the master-key to his
l Origin of Civilization, p. 350.
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 403
own science, and that every great system of ancient
mythology and of mythological geography must now
be freshly and intelligently interpreted in the light
of it. The old, old stories of a Golden Age, of the
Hesperidian Gardens, of the Tree of Golden Fruit,
of the Hyperborean Macrobii, of the insurrection
of the Titans, of the destruction of mankind by a
Flood, are history once more. Their authenticity
as history is attested by new and unchangeable evi
dences, — by witnesses as unbribable as the axis
of the earth and the pole of the heavens. No more
can the investigator of the history and philosophy
of religion rule out the ancient myths of humanity
as senseless, or seek to interpret them as results of
an inevitable " disease of language." No more can
they be palmed off upon us as capricious variations
of that myth of dawn, or of the sun, or of the storm,
which we are told that the fancy of " primitive "
men is ever weaving. They are simply blurred
chapters from the neglected and abused and almost
lost Bible of the Gentiles, confirming and establish
ing the opening chapters of our own.
Summing up, then, we see : I. That in rejecting
the historical conception of the primeval religious
belief of mankind Hume took up a position which
none of his own successors consider as at all tena
ble.
2. The further these successors have carried their
revolt against history, the more have they become
involved in contradiction with each other.
3. The more consistently and radically the dogma
of primitive savagery has been carried out, the more
inevitably has it landed its advocates in the doctrine
of primitive bestiality.
404 PARADISE FOUND.
4. In their eagerness to destroy the possibility or
credibility of primeval monotheism, these more con
sistent and radical theorists have inadvertently gone
so far as to render a self-consistent evolutional biol
ogy or sociology impossible.
5. In consequence hereof the more clear-sighted
of the representatives of Darwinism are just now
deftly re-approaching the long-scouted historic con
ception, by representing the first men as superior to
the modern savage in intellectual endowment, by
calling their powers high, by considering their judg
ments of natural objects substantially correct, by
admitting their knowledge of the true and normal
form of the family, by conceding to them a truly hu
man appreciation of ethical excellences and obliga
tions, by allowing to them a capacity to conceive of
an almighty Supreme Spirit, the Author and right
ful Governor of the world, and by recognizing that
nearly all religions present clear traces of corrup
tion. So far as principles are concerned these rep
resentations surrender their whole case. With these
data Adamic Revelation becomes quite as possible
and quite as credible as Abrahamic, or Mosaic, or
Christian Revelation.
6. The Anlage for religion is no product of age
long advances in civilization and in the arts. The
unclad Adam of the garden was no more incapaci
tated for the knowledge of his Father than was that
naked second Adam, for whose advent Mary pro
vided the swaddling-clothes. If the former seems
too undeveloped to be an organ of divine revelation,
the latter, the highest of all these organs, the abso
lute Revelator, began quite as low. If nomad Arabs
of to-day can see in storm and stars sublime mani*
EARLIEST FORM OF RELIGION. 405
festations of one almighty personal Power, why could
not the nomadic Abel as well ? If the Gospel mes
senger of to-day can cause the rudest Fijian to know
God and to experience a sense of divine forgiveness
and favor, why may not God's earliest preachers of
righteousness have produced a like effect on sincere
souls before the .discovery of the art of metal-work
ing ? Once let the anthropological and sociolog
ical postulates demanded even by Herbert Spencer
be granted, and the ancient historic conception of
Primitive Monotheism becomes both possible and
eminently reasonable. As an escape from the con
flicting and mutually destructive theories of the nat
uralistic school in its different departments, it pre
sents, on merely speculative grounds, a positive
attractiveness. Its full array of evidences, however,
is simply co-extensive and identical with the evi
dences for the reality of Historic Revelation as a
whole. Everything which goes to show that God
has intelligibly revealed himself to men at all bears
more or less directly upon the credibility of a Reve
lation " in the beginning?
7. Lastly, the Arctic Eden completes the recon
ciliation of Biblical and secular learning in their re
lations to the problem of the primitive religion of
men. As we have seen, both science and theology
now find in this primeval Bildungsherd at the Pole
the one prolific centre whence all the floral and
faunal and human life-forms of the whole earth have
proceeded. In an " environment" of such crea
tively potent, world -overflowing nature - forces as
were there, any culmination of life's manifestations
short of a " Golden Race " of men, kingly in stature,
Rishis in intelligence, measuring their Deva-Yike
406 PARADISE FOUND.
lives by centuries, would have been an incongruity.
That a loving Creator — creating because loving —
should have put himself into instant personal com
munion with these highest of his creatures, moral
natures fashioned in his own image and after his
likeness, children of his love, is to a theist, even
an ethnic theist, the only credible representation.
That such a lusty race should have been open to
temptation on the line of apparently innocent aspira
tion after still higher perfections, that they should
have desired to "be as gods," that they should have
coveted experimental and personal knowledge of
evil as well as of good, — these are suppositions
which no serious anthropologist will pronounce in
admissible. That the actual revolt of such an order
of moral agents from the true law and basis of its
life should have carried into its subsequent historic
developments consequences of profoundest import is
as much a necessary implication of the law of hered
ity and of the established constitution of nature as
it is an instinctive inference from the preconceived
character of a perfect Moral Governor. Given such
antediluvian men, one must pronounce the history
of antediluvian religion, as reported in the oldest
memories and in the most sacred scriptures of hu
manity, a self-attesting chronicle.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY
OF HISTORY AND THE THEORY OF THE DEVELOP
MENT OF CIVILIZATION.
It would be a valuable contribution to the Study of Civilization to have the ac~
tion of Decline and Fall investigated on a -wider and more exact basis of evidence
than has yet been attempted. — E. B. TYLOR.
L'orfut certainement le premier metal que Von connut. . . . Les trots ages des
poetes, Page d'or, Vage d'airain, et Page de fer sont une realite, et non une fic
tion.1- — A. DB ROCHAS.
BESIDES their philosophies of religion, the apostles
of universal primeval savagery have also their Phi
losophy of Human History and of Social Progress.
First of all, they would have us believe that man has
existed upon the Earth hundreds of thousands of
years,2 and that for at least the first hundred thou
sand years, possibly for twice or thrice this period,
1 Revue Scientifique, Paris, September 22, 1883.
2 With an impressive attempt at accuracy Professor Mortillet
says, "at least 230,000 to 240,000 years." Le Prehistorique, p.
627. Haeckel says, " in any case more than 20,000 years," " prob
ably more than 100,000 years," " perhaps many hundred thousand
years." Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichtc, p. 595. Mr. John Fiske,
building upon Croll, thinks that " the human race has covered both
the eastern and the western hemispheres for thousands of centuries,"
and that the period during which man has possessed sufficient intelli
gence to leave a traditional record of himself is " only an infinitesi
mal fraction " of the time. In one passage he fixes on the period of
" eight hundred thousand years," and at one time Lyell and others
favored the same duration. Cosmic Philosophy, ii. 320, 295. Com
pare on the other side Southall, The Recent Origin of Man, Phila.,
1875, ar|d The Epoch of the Mammoth and the Apparition of Man
upon the Earfk, Phila., 1878.
408 PARADISE FOUND.
he lived like a wild beast in thickets and dens and
caverns of the earth.1 His one occupation was the
struggle for existence. The very cave in which
his wretched young were sheltered from the storm
was continually exposed to invasion by the cave-
hyena and the cave-bear, fiercer and more powerful
than the modern type. His multitudinous enemies
were all provided with offensive and defensive
armor, — with tusk and fang, with claw and beak,
with lances steeped in never-failing deadliest poi
sons. To every foe they could oppose an almost
impenetrable hide, a mail of horny scales, a solid
shell. He, by strangest anomaly, was destitute of
all. He was a naked and defenseless babe in the
Indian jungle of Earth's fierce and venomous car-
nivora. He had not a weapon, not an implement
with which to shape one. Even had he had imple
ments ever so good, he would not have known
enough to fashion himself the rudest club from the
branch of a tree. He had not yet " learned to look
up " to where the tree branches grew. " Habit as
1 " In the dim mist of bygone ages our ancestors lived the life
of wild beasts in forests and caves." Elisee Reclus, Ocean, Atmos
phere^ and Life, vol. ii., p. 190. " We must assign to him the posi
tion of a savage, but of a savage as far below the buffalo-hunting
Pawnee as the latter is removed from the cultivated representative of
the Caucasian race." Rau, Early Man in Europe. N. Y., 1876 : p.
162. " On such a view " as that " of the modern naturalist, savage
life itself is afar advanced condition." Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol.
i-> P- 37- " All our recent investigations in Europe into the state of
the arts in the earlier Stone Age lead clearly to the opinion that at a
period many thousands of years anterior to the historical, man was
in a state of great barbarism and ignorance, exceeding that of the most
savage tribes of modern times!'' Lyell, Principles of Geology, vol. ii.,
p. 485. For a contrary view see the Duke of Argyll's chapter " On
the Degradation of Man " in his Unity of Nature. London, 1884 :
PP- 374-447-
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 409
well as nature kept his eyes fixed upon the ground."
As we saw in the preceding chapter, he supposed
that " the branches of the trees extended quite to
heaven, hiding themselves in infinitely remote
ethereal regions." Indeed, according to some of
these advocates, this precious "primitive man" could
not distinguish a tree when he saw it. He was not
at all certain that its outspreading roots and branches
were not the legs and arms of a fellow-man who
happened to grow in that particular way. So says
a " generally-understandable-scientific lecturer " of
Germany, Dr. Wilhelm Mannhardt. Let us note
his exact statement : " However inconceivable it
may be to us moderns, there truly was a time when
people were unable to make any conceivable distinc
tion between a plant and a man."1
It is somewhat to be feared lest writers of this
sort have been a little precipitate in rejecting so de
terminedly the traditional idea of extraordinary an
tediluvian longevity. For if the earliest generations
of mankind were in truth such idiotic specimens as
here represented, the great problems as to the possi
bility of their defending themselves against the blood
thirsty and powerful carnivora by which they were
1 " Alle lebenden Wesen, vom Menschen bis zur Pflanze, haben
Geborenwerden, Wachsthum und Tod miteinander gemein, und diese
Gemeinschaft des Schicksals mag in einer fernen Kindheitsperiode
unsers Geschlechts so uberwaltigend auf die noch ungelibte Beobach-
tung unserer Voraltern eingedrungen sein, dass sie darliber die Un-
terschiede iibersahen, welche jene Schopfungsstufen voneinander tren-
nen. So unbegreiflich es uns Modernen klingen mag, hat es in
Wahrheit eine Zeit gegeben, in der man keinen begreiflichen Unter-
schied zwischen einer Pflanze und einem Menschen zu machen wuss-
te." Sammlung gemeinverstdndlicher •wissenschaftlicher Vortrage,
herausgegeben von Rudolf Virchow und Franz von Holtzendorff. Nro.
239. Berlin, 1876.
4IO PARADISE FOUND.
surrounded, and as to the possibility of their learning
sufficiently early how to wring a subsistence from
the unfriendly soil, must give place to the still more
perplexing and more fundamental problem as to the
possibility and credibility of primitive procreation
itself. To say nothing of the question as to the
whence of the very first of these feeble and down-
looking intelligences, it is plain that if ever they
did have successors to take up and carry forward
and upward their type of life, in some way and at
seme time within the natural life of the first individ
uals, — incredible as it may be " to us moderns,"
— it must (happily for us) have dawned upon some
man's mind, or on whatever then occupied the place
of his mind, that between Daphne (or whoever was
practically the first woman) and a tree some dis
tinction was discernible. And as the friends who
give us such witless ancestors are prodigal to a fault
in their allowance of ages of time whenever any
ordinary geological or zoological result is to be
reached without troubling a Higher Power, it seems
to a calm on-looker a very penurious and illogical,
not to say cruel, procedure to require these embry-
otic representatives of incipient humanity to create,
or rather to evolve and bring to practicable perfec
tion, the high arts and sciences of intelligent per
ception, of human as distinguished from dendrolog-
ical physiology, of gynecology and obstetrics, — all
within the few swift years of a modern human life
time. With "two hundred and thirty thousand to
two hundred and forty thousand years " at his com
mand, or even " many hundred thousand," we really
hope Dr. Mannhardt will see his way to reconsider
this point, and to deal with the protistoi of the hu-
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 411
man world in a more liberal and truly evolutionistic
spirit.1
Happily, the apostles of what De Maistre calls
the banale hypothesis of primeval savagery have
done their worst, and doing this have shattered their
own party into an indefinite number of mutually an
tagonistic factions, each protesting against all who
happen to be more thorough-going and radical than
themselves. Thus Spencer is in array against Mc
Lennan, Caspari protests against Mannhardt, Vogt
endeavors to outdo Darwin, and so on to the end of
the chapter. The modern Babel is worse than the
ancient. To one surveying at the present time the
different departments of science which relate to
Man, it would seem as though in each the break
down of the theory of primitive human brutishness
and imbecility were complete, though not yet pub
licly proclaimed and acknowledged. A review of
the situation, with authentic citations of the dissen-
1 There is some evidence that the geologists are becoming increas
ingly skeptical as to the time-pieces relied upon by the ruling school
of paleontological anthropologists. For example: "The present
rates of the retrocession of Niagara, or of the deposit of Nile mud, or
of stalagmite in caverns, or of the accumulations of the rocks them
selves, or of the movement of glaciers, have been vainly used as natural
chronometers, on the assumption that they have been going on at the
same rate through all the past, and have been warranted never to stop,
or to want winding up, or to go faster or slower than at the moment the
observer was looking at them. Such attempts are so obviously futile
that it is not a little strange to find them seriously made by men like
Wallace and Mortillet." W. Boyd Dawkins, " Early Man in Amer
ica." North American Re-view, Oct., 1883, p. 338. See also " The
Niagara Gorge as a Chronometer," by G. Frederick Wright, in the
Bibliotheca Sacra, and in the Am. Journal of Science for 1884. Still
more significant is the alarmingly revolutionary " Opening Address "
delivered last summer in Montreal before the Geological Section cf
the British Association by President W. T. Blanford, F. R. S., and
printed in Nature, Sept. 4, 1884, pp. 440 ff.
412 PARADISE FOUND.
tient and often contradictory utterances of represen
tative leaders, would be most timely, but the task
must be left to other and more competent hands.
Here, foregoing all exposures of such a kind, we
will simply suggest to the reader a few obviously
important memoranda : —
1. Considered in the light of antecedent proba
bilities, there is no discoverable reason, or apol
ogy for a reason, why the first Homines should have
been but half-witted, any more than those perfect
Nautili which, ages earlier, with astounding skill
navigated the old Silurian seas.1
2. Given Human beings, normally endowed at the
beginning, and we see experience everywhere show
ing how all the savagery of past and present history
could easily and naturally have originated simply
from disregard of natural and moral law.
3. Given at the beginning nothing but Animal
powers, and we find nothing in the whole range of
experience, from the first dawn of history until now,
paralleling or in any wise rendering intelligible the
hypothetical biological legerdemain of Nature by
which these zoologic powers were once, and once
only, transmuted into Human.2
1 Since these pages were placed in the printer's hands the follow
ing has appeared in the scientific journals : " A discovery by Dr.
Lindstrom in the Silurian rocks of Gotland is worthy of special notice.
In beds which are said to be the equivalent of our Niagara group
he has discovered a remarkably well-preserved scorpion. Dr. Tho-
rell, one of the foremost students of Arachnida in the world, and Dr.
Lindstrom are preparing a paper upon it, and have given it the name
of Paleophoneus nuncius. No scorpions, nor indeed any Arachnida,
have before been found fossil in beds lower than the carboniferous
deposits, in which some twenty-five species have been found in this
country and Europe ; yet this Silurian example is more perfect than
Q.ny specimen of a fossil scorpion from any formation"
2 " That man, equally with the monad and the Conferva, owes his
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 413
4. If Paleontology presents to us certain types of
life which indicate in their successions a certain
progress, it must not be forgotten that the same
science presents us other types, whose successions
with equal clearness reveal a progressive degeneracy
and an ultimate disappearance. The movement
may be forward, but it may also be backward. " As
to the class Reptilia," says Sir Charles Lyell, "some
of the orders which prevailed when the Secondary
rocks were formed are confessedly much higher in
their organization than any of the same class now
living. If the less perfect Ophidians, or snakes,
which now abound on earth had taken the lead in
those ancient days among the land reptiles, and the
Deinosaurians had been contemporary with Man,
there can be no doubt that the progressionist would
have seized upon this fact with unfeigned satisfac
tion as confirmatory of his views. Now that the
order of succession is precisely reversed, and that
origin to a protoplasmic germ, in which are contained all the possi
bilities of his after development, is no piece of scientific romance,
but demonstrable truth. . . . All forms of protoplasm, however alike
in appearance and composition science may and does declare them to
be, are not identical in their potentialities. They do not, in other
words, all possess similar powers of becoming similar organisms.
The speck which remains an Amoeba has no power of evolving from
its substance a higher form of life. The protoplasmic spore of a sea
weed is a seaweed still, despite its similarity to other or higher forms
of plant-germs. The germ of the sponge, again, remains possessed
of the powers which can convert it into a sponge alone. And the
differences between such protoplasmic specks and the germ which is
destined to evolve the human frame can only be declared as of im
mense extent, and as equaling in their nature the wide structural and
functional distinctions which we draw betwixt the sponge and the
man. Of such differences in the inherent nature of protoplasm un
der different conditions we are as yet in complete ignorance." — An
drew Wilson, Ph. D., F. L. S., Chapters on Evolution. London, 1883 :
9P- 74* 75-
414 PARADISE FOUND.
the age of the Iguanodon was long anterior to that
of the Eocene palaeophis and the living boa, while
the crocodile is in our own times the highest repre
sentative of its class, a retrograde movement in this
important division of the vertebrata must be admit
ted." l With this agrees the emphatic declaration of
Andrew Wilson : " A study of the facts of animal
development is well calculated to show that life is
not all progress, and that it includes retrogression
as well as advance. Physiological history can read
ily be proved to tend in many cases towards back
sliding instead of reaching forwards and upwards to
higher levels. This tendency, beginning now to be
better recognized in biology than in late years, can
readily be shown to exercise no unimportant influ
ence on the fortunes of animals and plants." 2 In
view of these facts of retrogression, the latest writers
on the history of life on our planet, even when pro
fessing, with the last-quoted author, to accept of
Darwin's philosophy as true, are at the same time
very generally saying, " It cannot be the whole
truth." 3
1 The Antiq^l^ty of 'Man , Philadelphia ed., p. 402.
2 Andrew Wilson, Ph. D., F. L. S., Chapters on Evolution, p. 343
(italics ours). See pp. 342-365. The progress of paleontological
research is constantly bringing new illustrations to light. Revue Scien-
tifique. Paris, 1884: p. 282. Even in our late age of the world
" highly specialized forms of life are in fact numerically a minority of
living beings." E. D. Cope, " On Archaesthetism," in the American
Naturalist. Phila., 1882 : vol. xvi., p. 468. Compare same writer
on "Catagenesis," in vol. xviii. (i884), pp. 970-984.
3 What could be more striking and impressive than the following
fresh testimony from this field : " The flora of the whole Paleozoic
period ... is very distinct from that of succeeding times. Still, the
leading families of Rhizocarpea, j&quisetacea, Lycopodiacece, Filicea,
and Conifera, established in Paleozoic times, still remain, and the
changes which have occurred consist mainly in the degradation of the
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 415
5. Again, by the same testimony of the rocks,
life need not, of necessity, either advance or retreat ;
it may stand as first originated from age to age.
Says Professor Nicholson, "There are various groups,
some of them highly organized, which make their
appearance at an extremely ancient date, but which
continue throughout geological time almost un
changed, and certainly unprogressive. Many of these
' Persistent Types ' are known, and they indicate that
under given conditions, at present unknown to us,
it is possible for a life-form to subsist for an almost
indefinite period without any important modification
of its structure." 1
6. All arguments for the alleged self-evolution of
the Human Race out of preceding animal races,
based upon an alleged universal and uniformly pro
gressive self-evolution of life-forms in the animal
kingdom, are, in view of the above facts, arguments
originating in ignorance or in fraud.
7. According to the teachers of the current ag
nostic anthropology and atheistic history, modern
Man is the supreme product, the crowning glory, of
the cosmic life-process, at least so far as our planet
is concerned. Yet, by their own concessions, through
all the unmeasured aeons during which this being
has been maturing and perfecting, the Earth has
steadily been losing its life-giving warmth, its once
delightful and almost equable climate has slowly
three first families, and in the introduction of new types of Gymno-
sperms and Phaenogams. These changes, delayed and scarcely per
ceptible in the Permian and Early Mesozoic, seem to have been greatly
accelerated in the Later Mesozoic," Principal Dawson, " On the More
Ancient Land Floras of the Old and New Worlds." Paper read be
fore the British Association in Montreal, Aug. 1884. Nature, p. 527.
1 Life-History of the Earth, p. 371, 2.
41 6 PARADISE FOUND.
given place to Sahara heat and Arctic cold, its once
luxuriant flora has yielded to types of marked infe
riority, and its degenerating fauna ceased to come
up to the measure of the stature of preceding forms.1
This is saying that one and the same secular Deteri
oration of Environment has devitalized and degraded
all forms of life save one, but that, unaided and alone,
it has elevated that one to the physical, intellectual,
and spiritual kingship of the world.2
8. In proportion as the discussions and conclu
sions of this treatise have vindicated and illustrated
the trustworthiness of the most ancient Traditions
with reference to the location of the first abode of
the race, in precisely the same degree have they au
thenticated and verified those same Traditions as
trustworthy sources of information with respect to
Man's primitive state, his intellectual powers, and
his knowledge of the Divine.
Finally, the varying Power of Man over Nature,
dwindling whensoever by vice he descends beast-
ward, increasing whensoever by virtue he ascends
1 " The Pliocene period is the declining age of the European flora,
the time when the climatic conditions are definitively altered, when
the vegetation gradually becomes poor and ceases to gain anything.
The progress of the phenomenon is slow, but it moves along an in
clined plane, on which it never stops. Those ornamental plants, those
precious trees, those noble and elegant shrubs, which are now care
fully trained by artificial culture in European conservatories were
until then inhabitants of Europe, but they left it forever. One by one
the ostracised plants take their departure, lingering here and there on
the road to exile. It is this exodus that we should have to describe,
if we could follow step by step the march of retrogression, and indi
cate species by species the progress and the result of this abandon
ment of our soil." — G. de Saporta, Le Monde des Plantes avant V Ap
parition de FHomme. Noticed in Am. Journal of Science, 1879, p.
270.
2 See above, page 100, note.
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 417
Godward, is to a truly scientific and philosophic eye
full of significance. The slightest study of the man
ifestations of this power in history inwardly convicts
Us of unfaithfulness, as a race, to the true law of our
being. We cannot help feeling that we ought to be
lords of Nature. Our actual relation to the cosmic
forces is not, and in historic time never has been,
the ideal and true relation. It was no narrow-
minded " bibliolater " who penned the following ex
pression of this feeling ; it was Ralph Waldo Emer
son : " As we degenerate, the contrast between us
and our house is more evident. We are as much
strangers in Nature as we are aliens from God. We
do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and
the deer run away from us ; the bear and the tiger
rend us. . . . Man is a god in ruins. When men
are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into
the immortal as gently as we awake from dreams.
Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was perme
ated and dissolved by spirit. At present he applies
to Nature but half his force. . . . Meantime, in the
thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a
better light, — occasional examples of the action of
man upon Nature with his entire force. Such exam
ples are the traditions of MIRACLES in the antiquity
of all nations, the HISTORY OF JESUS CHRIST, the
achievements of a principle in political revolutions,
the miracles of enthusiasm, the wisdom of children.
. . . The problem of restoring to the world original
and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption of the
soul"
The above is an utterance as true and deep as it
is beautiful and poetic. And here in this ancient
and Biblical conception of Man's relation to Nature
27
41 8 PARADISE FOUND.
is given the sun-clear solution of the whole contro
versy between the advocates of universal racial and
technological degeneration, on the one hand, and the
advocates of universal racial and technological pro
gression, on the other. Both parties are right and
both are wrong. The one has vindicated and em
phasized one vital class of facts ; the other, another
class equally vital. Christian thought interprets and
harmonizes them both. It shows us through all hu
man history racial and social and technological deca
dence wherever men have rejected or ignored God.
It shows us, on the other hand, racial and social and
technological progress wherever men have acknowl
edged and lovingly served that Divine One in whom
we live and move and have our being. Here, then,
is the law of true human progress. As Emerson
in his more Christian moods would put it, The res
toration of the lost harmony between Man and his
House must begin with the Redemption of his Soul.
As to the primeval condition of our race, a truly
scientific mind will wish to base its conception not
on the air-hung speculations of mere theorists, but on
an immovable foundation of fact, attested and con
firmed by the widest, oldest, and most incontestable
of all concurrences of divine and human testimony.
According hereto, as in its beginning light was light,
and water water, and the Spirit spirit, so in his be
ginning Man was Man. It says that the first men
could not have been men without a human con
sciousness, and that they could not have had a hu
man consciousness without rationality and freedom.
It says that they could not have possessed con
scious rationality and freedom without the percep
tion of ethical qualities and the personal taste of
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 419
moral experiences. It boldly asserts that, accord
ing to every principle of just analogy, the notion
that it took the earliest men one hundred thousand
years to get an idea of the conditions of normal in
tellectual, and ethical, and social living is as incredi
ble as that it took the first-born mammal one hun
dred thousand years to find its mother's milk. It
calls attention to the fact that all the oldest historic
peoples of every continent unite in the testimony
that the first men had knowledge of superhuman
personalities, good and evil. It dwells upon the
equally universal tradition that primeval human life,
while progressive in everything which accumulating
human experience would of necessity improve, was
yet from the first the life of decidedly super-bestial,
almost god-like intelligences, as daring ultimately in
evil as potent originally for good. It holds on the
same authority that after centuries and possibly mil
lenniums of such history as great natures undisci
plined by virtue are ever reproducing, the social
organism was incurably corrupted and the moral
world-order itself defied. As Plato's Egyptian priests
told Solon, " the divine portion in human nature
faded out ; " the purely human " gained the upper
hand," and, spoiled by the very excellence of their
fortune, " men became unseemly. To him who had
an eye to see they appeared base, and had lost the
fairest of their precious gifts. They still appeared
glorious and blessed, at the very time when they
were filled with unrighteous avarice and violence.
Then the GOD OF GODS, who rules with law, and is
able to see into such things, perceiving that an hon
orable race was in a most wretched state, and want-
ing to inflict punishment upon them that they might
420 PARADISE FOUND.
be chastened and improved," made fresh announce
ments of divine penalty and promise, to the end
that haply He might recall them to that earlier and
better life, when they had " despised everything but
virtue, neither were intoxicated by luxury ; " when,
being " possessed of true and great spirits, they prac
ticed gentleness and wisdom in their intercourse
with one another ; " when they " were obedient to
the laws and well affectioned toward the gods." l
These gracious endeavors of Divine compassion
proving fruitless, the integrity of the world's ra
tional purpose and significance could be conserved
only by penalty, and by a new moral and physi
cal conditioning of the race. No change of moral
administration could suffice, since every wise appli
ance of merefy moral influence and instruction had
been exhausted. A new physical environment and
conditioning was essential to the new moral methods
which, in this critical juncture, Humanity was need
ing. The inbringing of such a new physical envi
ronment would of itself carry to human consciences,
individual and social, the profoundest and most ef
fectual of moral meanings. Both the physical and
the moral change came in that world-convulsion
which Plato calls "the Great Deluge of all." In it
perished what Hesiod and Ovid and so many others
called the " Golden Race " of men, — the first, the
fairest, the strongest, the longest-lived of all that
ever bore the human form divine. Under its waters
were engulfed precious accumulations of science,
the primordial creations of art, the incunabula of all
literature. So sore was this loss of man's costliest
possessions that either myth or truthful history has
1 Crifias, 1 20.
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 42!
filled the early Shemitic world with the pathetic
story that the God of gods, while arranging for the
righteous judgment upon the ungodly, Himself still
so compassionated the successors and heirs of its
unhappy victims as to command the patriarchal
minister of His will to make an indestructible mon
umental record of all that the progenitors of a new
Humanity would need to know.1
The new physical conditions under which the
race was placed were the conditions brought in by
the Diluvian cataclysm. They involved (i) expa
triation, the great Glacial Age compelling an entire
abandonment of the mother-region of the human
family ; (2) dispersion, the frozen and sterilized con
dition of even what is now the North Temperate
zone rendering the struggle for the means of subsist
ence a most arduous and difficult one ; (3) deterio
ration of physical constitution corresponding to the
biological conditions of the new and deteriorated en
vironment ; and (4), as a natural consequence of the
whole, an abbreviation of the normal longevity pre
viously enjoyed. Being at the same time reduced
to the lowest social unit in the way of organization,
— the Family, — and being, in consequence of the
poverty of Nature's provision, compelled to spread
in proportion as it multiplied, the new Humanity of
" the world which now is " was signally guarded
against the repetition of those insolent and God-
defying forms of sin in consequence of which a
nemesis of cosmical proportions had overtaken the
antediluvian world.2
1 Josephus, Antiquities, i. 2, 3. Lenormant, Beginnings of His
tory, p. 445. Polar " Sippara " and the " Siriad land " are one.
2 The events described in Gen. xi. 1-9 may have occurred "in the
Front-country" (v. 2). See above, page 221, note I.
422 PARADISE FOUND.
Such is the conception of primeval human history
which the oldest traditions of the oldest nations
set over against this late-born dream of " primitive
savagery." It is the conception of the whole Chris
tian world — of the whole Jewish world — of the
Mohammedan world — of the ancient Greek and
Roman world — of the world of the eldest Asiatic
and Egyptian antiquity. It is the irrefutable Selbst-
zetigniss of the Human Race respecting facts of
which it has the knowledge of a living and most in
terested participating witness.1
According to the results of this treatise the
primitive seat of the world's first civilization was
outside the boundaries of all lands known to record
ed history. This being so, Mr. Tylor's confident
challenge has for the present quite lost its force.
"Where," he exclaims, — "where now is the district
of the Earth that can be pointed to as the primeval
home of Man which does not show by rude stone
implements buried in its soil the savage condition
of its former inhabitants ? " 2 The " cave-men " of
Europe can as little illustrate man's antediluvian
condition as Robinson Crusoe's cave could illustrate
Westminster Cathedral. Postdiluvian civilization,
or barbarism, whichever one may choose to call it,
1 " The men of old time . . . must surely have known the truth
about their own ancestors. . . . How can we doubt the word ... as
they declare that they are speaking of what took place in the family ? "
Plato, Timaus, 40. It is satisfactory to note that that undervalua
tion of oral tradition which is inseparable from the theory that man
is merely an improved beast, and which shows its natural fruit in such
free-handed reconstructors of history as Professors Kuenen and
Wellhausen, has proceeded so far that even rejecters of the tradi
tional estimate of the Pentateuch and of the Old Testament are be
ginning to react restively against it. See APPENDIX, Sect. VII.
2 Primitive Culture, vol. i., p. 60.
ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION. 423
may be studied in "Stone Age" implements and
products wherever we may find them, but never
should it be forgotten that, back of all dawnings of
new knowledge and new arts here revealed, lay the
fuller knowledge and the more perfect arts of a
favored antediluvian world.1
Let no one say that the profession of such an
opinion betrays the prejudice of a Christian educa
tion ; that it is ignoring the fruits of a century's
study ; that it is simply repristinating the doctrine
1 In his late work, entitled India: What can it teach us? (Lon
don, 1883) Professor Max Mtiller well challenges the first prin
ciples of our dominant school of " Culture-students," as follows :
" What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter of their
history ? Do we ever get an insight into their antecedents ? Can
we understand what, after all, is everywhere the most important and
the most instructive lesson to learn, how they have come to be what
they are ? There is, indeed, their language, and in it we see traces of
growth that point to distant ages, quite as much as the Greek of
Homer, or the Sanskrit of the Vedas. . . . Unless we admit a special
creation for these savages they must be as old as the Hindus, the
Greeks, and Romans ; as old as we ourselves. We may assume, of
course, if we like, that their life has been stationary, and that they
are to-day what the Hindus were no longer than three thousand
years ago. But that is a mere guess, and is contradicted by the facts
of their language. They may have passed through ever so many
vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive may be, for all we
know, a relapse into savagery, or a corruption of something that was
more rational and intelligible in former stages. Think only of the
rules that determine marriage among the lowest of savage tribes.
Their complication passes all understanding. All seems a chaos of
prejudice, superstition, pride, vanity, and stupidity. And yet we
catch a glimpse here and there that there was some reason in most
of that unreason ; we see how sense dwindled away into nonsense,
custom into ceremony, ceremony into force. Why, then, should this
surface of savage life represent to us the lowest stratum of human
life, the very beginnings of civilization, simply because we cannot dig
beyond that surface ? " A hundred years hence the story that the
wise men of the nineteenth century sought to reconstruct the begin
nings of human history by the study of the lowest contemporary
savages will be one of the choicest of popular illustrations of the
folly of " ante-scientific times."
424 PARADISE FOUND.
of a forgotten Goguet, and seeking to resurrect the
long dead Banier. If any reader is tempted to such
utterances, it is possible that an imaginary conversa
tion may help him to juster conclusions.
Let us fancy ourselves at Cnossus, upon the
shores of Crete, hundreds of years before the Chris
tian era. A traveler has just landed, — a Greek
from Athens, intent upon visiting the celebrated
temple and cave of Zeus. As he is walking to the
temple he falls in with two companions, the one an
intelligent Cretan, the other a traveler from Lace-
daemon. After due salutations they naturally dis
course of the laws and institutions of the country,
of their origin, and of the origin of all states and
laws and civilizations. And this we may imagine is
a part of their conversation : —
The Athenian : Do you believe that there is any
truth in ancient traditions ?
The Cretan : What traditions ?
Ath. The traditions about the many destructions
of mankind which have been occasioned by deluges
and diseases, and in many other ways, and of the
preservation of a remnant.
Cr. Every one is disposed to believe them.
Ath. Let us imagine one of them : I will take
the famous one which was caused by a Deluge.
Cr. What is to be remarked thereon ?
Ath. I should say that those who then escaped
would only be hill shepherds, — small sparks of the
human race preserved on the tops of mountains.
Such survivors would necessarily be unacquainted
with the arts of those who live in cities, and with
the various devices which are suggested to them by
interest or ambition, and all the wrongs which they
contrive against one another.
ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION 425
Cr. Very true.
Ath. Let us suppose, then, that the cities in the
plains and on the sea-coast were utterly destroyed
at that time. Would not all implements perish and
every other excellent invention of political or any
other sort of wisdom utterly fail at that time ?
Cr. Why, yes ; and if things had always con
tinued as they are at present ordered, how could
any discovery have ever been made even in the least
particular ? For it is evident that the arts were un
known during thousands and thousands of years.
And no more than a thousand or two thousand
years have elapsed since the discoveries of Dae
dalus, Orpheus and Palamedes, — since Marsyas
and Olympus invented music, and Amphion the lyre,
— not to speak of numberless other inventions
which are but of yesterday.
Ath. Have you forgotten the name of a friend
who is really of yesterday ?
Cr. I suppose that you mean Epimenides.
Ath. The same, my friend ; for his ingenuity does
indeed far overleap the heads of all your great men ;
what Hesiod had preached of old, he carried out in
practice, as you declare.
Cr. Yes, according to our tradition.
Ath. After the great destruction, may we not
suppose that the state of man was something of
this sort. In the beginning of things there was a
fearful illimitable desert and a vast expanse of land ;
a herd or two of oxen would be the only survivors
of the animal world ; and there might be a few
goats, hardly enough to support the life of those
who tended them.
Cr. True.
426 PARADISE FOUND.
Ath. And of cities or governments or legislation,
about which we are now talking, do you suppose
that they could have any recollection at all ?
Cr. They could not.
Ath. And out of this state of things has there not
sprung all that we now are and have : cities and
governments, and arts and laws, and a great deal of
vice and a great deal of virtue ?
Cr. What do you mean ?
Ath. Why, my good friend, how can we possibly
suppose that those who knew nothing of all the
good and evil of cities could have attained their full
development, whether of virtue or of vice ?
Cr. I understand your meaning, and you are quite
right.
Ath. But, as time advanced and the race multi
plied, the world came to be what the world is.
Cr. Very true.
Ath. Doubtless the change was not made all in
a moment, but little by little, during a very long
period of time.
Cr. That is to be supposed.
Ath. At first they would have a natural fear ring
ing in their ears which would prevent their descend
ing from the heights into the plain.
Cr. Of course.
Ath. The fewness of the survivors would make
them desirous of intercourse with one another ; but
then the means of traveling either by land or by sea
would have been almost entirely lost with the loss of
the arts, and there would be great difficulty in getting
at one another ; for iron and brass and all metals
would have become confused, and would have dis
appeared ; nor would there be any possibility of ex-
ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION. 427
tracting them ; and they would have no means of
felling timber. Even if you suppose that some im
plements might have been preserved in the moun
tains, they would quickly have worn out and disap
peared, and there would be no more of them until
the art of metallurgy had again revived.
Cr. There could not have been.
Ath. In how many generations would this be at
tained ?
Cr. Clearly not for many generations.
Ath. During this period, and for some time after
wards, all the arts which require iron and brass and
the like would disappear.
Cr. Certainly.
Ath. Faction and war would also have died out
in those days and for many reasons.
Cr. How would that be ?
Ath. In the first place, the desolation of these
primitive men would create in them a feeling of af
fection and friendship towards one another ; and,
in the second place, they would have no occasion
to fight for their subsistence, for they would have
pasture in abundance, except just at first, and in
some particular cases ; on this pasture-land they
would mostly support life in a primitive age, having
plenty of milk and flesh, and procuring other food
by the chase, not to be despised either in quantity
or quality. They would also have abundance of
clothing, and bedding, and dwellings, and utensils
either capable of standing on the fire or not ; for
the plastic and weaving arts do not require any use
of iron : God has given these two arts to man in
order to provide him with necessaries, that, when
reduced to their last extremity, the human race may
428 PARADISE FOUND.
still grow and increase. Hence in those days man
kind were not very poor ; nor was poverty a cause
of difference among them ; and rich they could not
be, if they had no gold or silver, and such at that
time was their condition. And the community
which has neither poverty nor riches will always
have the noblest principles, there is no insolence
or injustice; nor, again, are there any contentions
or envyings among them. And therefore they were
good, and also because they were what is called
simple-minded ; and when they were told about
good and evil, they in their simplicity believed what
they heard to be very truth and practiced it. No
one had the wit to suspect another of a falsehood,
as men do now ; but what they heard about gods
and men they believed to be true and lived accord
ingly ; and therefore they were in all respects such
as we have described them.
Cr. That quite accords with my views, and with
those of my friend here.
Ath. Would not many generations living on in a
simple manner, although ruder, perhaps, and more
ignorant of the arts generally, and in particular of
those of land or naval warfare, and likewise of other
arts, termed in cities legal practices and party con
flicts, and including all conceivable ways of hurting
one another in word and deed ; although inferior to
those who lived before the Deluge, or to the men of
our day in these respects, would they not, I say, be
simpler and more manly, and also more temperate,
and in general more just? The reason has been
already explained.
Cr. Very true.
Ath. I should wish you to understand that what
ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION. 429
has preceded and what is about to follow has been,
and will be, said with the intention of explaining
what need the men of that time had of laws, and
who was their lawgiver.
Cr. And thus far what you have said has been
very well said.
Ath. They could hardly have wanted lawgivers as
yet ; nothing of that sort was likely to have existed
in their days, for they had no letters at this early
stage ; they lived by habit and the customs of their
forefathers, as they are called.
Cr. Probably.
Ath. But there was already existing a form of
government which, if I am not mistaken, is gener
ally termed a lordship, and this still remains in
many places, both among Hellenes and barbarians,
and is the government which is declared by Homer
to have prevailed among the Cyclopes : —
" They have neither councils nor judgments, but
they dwell in hollow rocks on the tops of high
mountains, and every one is the judge of his wife
and children, and they do not trouble themselves
about one another."
Cr. That must be a charming poet of yours ; I
have read some other verses of his, which are very
clever ; but I do not know much of him, for foreign
poets are little read among the Cretans.
The Laced&monian. But they are in Lacedaemon,
and he appears to be the prince of them all ; the
manner of life, however, which he describes is not
Spartan, but rather Ionian, and he seems quite to
confirm what you are saying, tracing up the ancient
state of mankind by the help of tradition to bar
barism.
43O PARADISE FOUND.
Ath. Yes ; and we may accept his witness to the
fact that there was a time when primitive societies
had this form.
Cr. Very true.
Ath. And did not such states spring out of single
habitations and families who were scattered and
thinned in the devastations ; and the eldest of them
was their ruler, because with them government orig
inated in the authority of a father and a mother,
whom, like a flock of birds, they followed, forming
one troop under the patriarchal rule and sovereignty
of their parents, which of all sovereignties is the
most just ?
Cr. Very true.
Ath. After this they came together in greater
numbers, and increased the size of their cities, and
betook themselves to husbandry, first of all at the
foot of the mountains, and made inclosures of loose
walls and works of defense, in order to keep off wild
beasts ; thus creating a single large and common
habitation.
Cr. Yes ; at least we may suppose it.
Ath. There is another thing which would prob
ably happen.
Cr. What?
Ath. When these larger habitations grew up out
of the lesser original ones, each of the lesser ones
would survive in the larger ; every family would be
under the rule of the eldest, and, owing to their sep
aration from one another, would have peculiar cus
toms in things divine and human, which they would
have received from their several parents who had
educated them, and these customs would incline
them to order, when the parents had the element of
ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION. 431
order in them ; and to courage, when they had the
element of courage in them. And they would natu
rally stamp upon their children, and upon their chil
dren's children, their own institutions ; and, as we
are saying, they would find their way into the larger
society, having already their own peculiar laws.
Cr. Certainly.
Ath. And every man surely likes his own laws
best, and the laws of others not so well.
Cr. True.
Ath. Then how we seem to have stumbled upon
the beginnings of legislation !
Cr. Exactly.
Ath. The next step will be that these persons who
meet together must choose some arbiters, who will
inspect the laws of all of them, and will publicly pre
sent such of them as they approve to the chiefs who
lead the tribes, and are in a manner their kings, and
will give them the choice of them. These will them-
selves be called legislators, and will appoint the mag
istrates, framing some sort of aristocracy, or perhaps
monarchy, out of the dynasties or lordships, and in
this altered state of the government they will live.
Cr. Yes, they would be appointed in the order
which you mention. . . .
But we will not pursue the conversation farther.
Is the reader indignant that he has been made to
listen so long to Abbe Banier, clumsily disguised in
the robes of a pretended Athenian philosopher and
discoursing, all out of character, on matters which
betray "the prejudices of a Christian education"?
It may well be. To a reader of Lubbock and Tylor
and Vogt, the sentiments of the Athenian traveler
do seem singularly in accord with Holy Scripture.
432 PARADISE FOUND.
But let not the innocent suffer for the guilty. It
happens that our imaginary conversation is not of
our imagining. It was written more than two thou
sand years before the birth of Abbe Banier, and by
as good a pagan as the famed Athenian Plato.
On the whole, we are of the opinion that the
great consentaneous Traditions of the Human Race
will yet outlive a considerable number of Bachofens
and Biichners and Buckles, and that if ever the bur
ial-place of Moses shall be discovered, it will not be
found to be in any of the ignominious graveyards
periodically prepared for him by on-coming Profes
sors of Hebrew eager for a stunning inaugural. De
spite the ingenious " higher " criticism of to-day's
ephemeral "authorities," the Biblical scholarship of
the future is more likely to carry the age of the
composition of the Eden story backward than for
ward. The documents embedded in the opening
chapters of Genesis may yet prove to be, what rev
erent and orthodox scholars have already affirmed
— fragments of the Sacred Scriptures of the Ante
diluvian Patriarchal Church.1 Whether so or no, one
ancient word shall evermore be verified : " The grass
withereth, the flower fadeth ; but the word of our
God shall stand forever."
Our treatise opened with a pathetic picture, — it
must close with another. Long-lost Eden is found ;
but its gates are barred against us. Now, as at the
beginning of our exile, a sword turns every way to
keep the Way of the Tree of Life.
1 Moffat : Comparative History of Religions. New York, 1871 :
vol. i., pp. 99 seq.
SCHL USS WOR T. 433
Sadder yet, it is Eden no longer. Even could
some new Columbus penetrate to the secret centre
of this Wonderland of the Ages, he could but hur
riedly kneel amid a frozen desolation and, dumb
with a nameless awe, let fall a few hot tears above
the buried and desolated hearthstone of Humanity's
earliest and loveliest home.
Happily for us, O Menschengeschlecht, a trusty
hand has added to the third of Genesis the closing
chapters of the Patmos Apocalypse. The thought
of the old forever evanished Eden is henceforth
bearable, for from afar we have caught the vision of
a Sinless Paradise, the frostless Gardens, the Tree,
and the River of the Heavenly City of God.
fa, wenn des Nordwinds rauhes Tosen
Der Erde Garten zugeschneit,
Dann bliihen erst des Himmels Rosen
In unverwelkter Herrlichkeit.
y#, sind wir Gdste hier zu Landen
Auf dieser kalten Winterflur,
So ist noch eine Ruh vorhanden
Dem Seufzen aller Kreatur.
KARL GEROK.
APPENDIX.
SECTION I. — THE EARTH OF COLUMBUS NOT A
TRUE SPHERE.
(Illustrating pp. 3-7 ; 306, 307.)
THE following authentic account of the views enter
tained by Columbus respecting the figure of the Earth
will be welcome to many readers : —
" I have always read that the world comprising the
land and the water was spherical, and the recorded expe
riences of Ptolemy and all others have proved this by the
eclipses of the moon and other observations made from
East to West, as well as the elevation of the Pole from
North to South. But as I have already described, I have
now seen so much irregularity, that I have come to an
other conclusion respecting the Earth, namely, that it is
not round as they describe, but of the form of a pear,
which is very round except where the stalk grows, at
which part it is most prominent ; or like a round ball
upon part of which is a prominence like a woman's nipple,
this protrusion being the highest and nearest the sky, sit
uated under the equinoctial line, and at the eastern ex
tremity of this sea. ... In confirmation of my opinion,
I revert to the arguments which I have above detailed
respecting the line, which passes from North to South a
hundred leagues westward of the Azores ; for in sailing
thence westward, the ships went on rising smoothly to
wards the sky, and then the weather was felt to be milder,
on account of which mildness the needle shifted one point
436 APPENDIX.
of the compass ; and the further we went, the more the
needle moved to the Northwest, this elevation producing
the variation of the circle which the North-star describes
with its satellites ; and the nearer I approached the equi
noctial line the more they rose and the greater was the
difference in these stars and in their circles. Ptolemy
and the other philosophers who have written upon the
globe thought that it was spherical, believing that this
[western] hemisphere was round as well as that in which
they themselves dwelt, the centre of which was in the
island of Arin, which is under the equinoctial line be
tween the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Persia ; and the
circle passes over Cape St. Vincent in Portugal westward,
and eastward by Cangara and the Seras ; — in which
hemisphere I make no difficulty as to its being a perfect
sphere as they describe; but this western half of the
world I maintain is like half of a very round pear, hav
ing a raised projection for the stalk, as I have already
described, or like a woman's nipple on a round ball.
Ptolemy and the others who have written on the globe
had no information respecting this part of the world,
which was then unexplored ; they only established their
own hemisphere, which, as I have already said, is half of
a perfect sphere. And now that your Highnesses have
commissioned me to make this voyage of discovery, the
truths which I have stated are evidently proved, because
in this voyage, when I was off the island of Hargin l and
its vicinity, which is twenty degrees to the North of the
equinoctial line, I found the people black and the land
very much burnt ; and when after that I went to the Cape
Verde Islands I found the people there very much darker
still, and the more southward we went, the more they ap
proach the extreme of blackness ; so that when I reached
the parallel of Sierra Leone, where, as night came on, the
North star rose five degrees, the people there were exces-
1 Arguin, west coast of Africa.
HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 437
sively black, and as I sailed westward the heat became ex
treme. But after I had passed the meridian or line which
I have already described, I found the climate became
gradually more temperate ; so that when I reached the
island of Trinidad, where the North star rose five degrees
as night came on, there, and in the land of Gracia, I
found the temperature exceedingly mild ; the fields and
the foliage likewise were remarkably fresh and green, and
as beautiful as the gardens of Valencia in April. The
people there are very graceful in form, less dark than
those whom I had before seen in the Indies, and wear
their hair long and smooth ; they are also more shrewd,
intelligent, and courageous. The sun was then in the sign
of Virgo over our heads and theirs ; therefore all this
must proceed from the extreme blandness of the temper
ature, which arises, as I have said, from this country be
ing the most elevated in the world and the nearest to the
sky. On these grounds, therefore, I affirm that the globe
is not spherical, but that there is the difference in its
form which I have described ; the which is to be found
in this hemisphere at the point where the Indies meet the
ocean, the extremity of the hemisphere being below the
equinoctial line. And a great confirmation of this is, that
when our Lord made the sun, the first light appeared in
the first point of the East, where the most elevated point
of the globe is." — Hakluyt Society Publications. Select
Letters of Columbus. Tr. by R. H. Major. London, 2d
ed., pp. 134-138.
SECTION II. — HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED.
BY M. LE MARQUIS G. DE SAPORTA.
How has the human race been able to spread itself
over the whole surface of the globe ? Is it the result
of different and independent origins in the several con-
43$ APPENDIX.
tinents, or have all men sprung from a common cradle, a
" mother-region " ? On this point students are divided,
Agassiz holding that men were created, and Carl Vogt
that they were developed, at different centres, and Qua-
trefages and the theologians maintaining the unity of
their origin. The fact is left that man, the same in all
the essential characteristics of the species, has advanced
into all the habitable parts of the globe, and that not re
cently and when provided with all the resources that
experience and inventive genius could put at his disposal,
but when still young and ignorant. It was then that,
weak and almost naked, having only just got fire and a
few rude arms with which to defend itself and procure
food, the human race conquered the world and spread it
self from within the Arctic Circle to Terra del Fuego,
from the Samoyed country to Van Diemen's Land, from
the North Cape to the Cape of Good Hope. It is this
primitive exodus, as certain as it is inconceivable, ac
cepted by science as well as by dogma, that we have to
explain, or at least to make probable ; and that in an age
when it is only after the most wonderful discoveries, by
the aid of the most powerful machinery for navigation,
through the boldest and most adventurous enterprises,
that civilized man has been able to flatter himself that he
has at last gone as far as infant man went in an age that
is so far removed from us as to baffle all calculations.
We must insist on this point, for it brings into light an
obstacle which those who have tried to trace out the con
nection between widely separated races and to determine
the course that had been followed by tribes now separated
by oceans and vast expanses have hitherto found insur
mountable ; for, if man is one — to which we are ready
to agree — we must assign a single point of departure
for his migrations. In these migrations, man has gone
wherever he could, and, at every spot he has occupied
and settled, has acquired characteristics peculiar to the
HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 439
place, and which differentiated him from the men settling
in other places. Hence the varieties of human races.
Some of these spots seem to have been peculiarly favor
able to his advancement, and became centres of civiliza
tion. The number of such centres is, however, very
limited, and their distribution is significant.
The continental masses are distributed in three prin
cipal groups, one feature in the configuration of which
must strike every one who carefully examines a map of
the world. It will be noticed that they are so expanded
toward the North as to touch in that direction or be sep
arated only by narrow passages, and that they also sur
round within the Arctic Circle a central polar sea with a
bordering island-belt. Going down toward the South we
find that the three continents, North America, Europe,
and Northern Asia, which had approached each other so
closely, give place to three appendages, South America,
Africa, and Australia, which in their turn gradually taper
off to mere points in an illimitable sea, long before they
reach the Antarctic Circle. Within this circle the con
figuration of the land is precisely the reverse of that in
the North j it is that of a solid cap of land around the
pole, in the midst of the great ocean.
If we again observe these masses, we shall find that
civilization was born in each of them under similar geo
graphical conditions, viz., in the neighborhood of a smaller
interior sea, near or rather North of the tropic of Cancer,
between 20° and 35° north latitude. The most eastern
of the centres is in China, near the Japan Sea. The
most western, and apparently the most recent, was along
the inner shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The last civili
zation was in the course of radiation and transformation
when the Europeans came to America, and was wholly
independent and autonomous ; but, weak and relatively
new, it was not able to resist the sudden onset of a
stronger race.
44O APPENDIX.
Toward the centre of the space whose extremes we
have marked out must be placed two other centres of
civilization, more ancient than either of the two already
named, and in the same zone of latitude — Egypt, in the
valley of the Nile, and near the Arabian Gulf, and Meso
potamia, near the head of the Persian Gulf. Thus, each
continental mass had its particular centre of civilization,
except Asia, which had two — one in the extreme east,
the other near the line which joins it to Europe. This
peculiar grouping of the chief centres of civilization in
such a relation of neighborhood constitutes the most con
siderable paleoethnic fact that we are able to record.
The Nile and the Syrian sea on the west, upper Armenia
and the Caspian on the north, the Hindoo-Koosh and
the Indus on the east, and the Arabian Sea on the south,
bound the region where Cushites, Semites, and Aryans,
the first farmers, workers, and founders of cities, the sec
ond pastoral people, and the third mountaineers, after
ward emigrants and conquerors, met, elbowed each other,
and mingled, conquerors and conquered by turns, invent
ing arts and the use of metals, learning arms and how to
organize themselves hierarchically, reaching their ideal
through religion, and having in writing the most power
ful instrument at the disposition of human intelligence.
With them we have the beginning of history, and a con
tinuous chain of social organizations, down to our own
days. The growth of civilization in these centres leaves,
however, still unaccounted for the diffusion of mankind
all over the earth, which took place at a period far an
terior to it.
The spread of man throughout Europe and Asia does
not offer very great difficulties, for, in consequence of the
long distance for which the two continents are joined,
Europe is in reality only a dependency of Asia ; and oc
cupation of Europe from Asia is conformable to religious
traditions. The difficulties are, however, formidable
HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 441
when we come to America, which we find occupied from
one end to the other by races whose unity has struck the
best observers. Not only, moreover, did the American
man inaugurate on the soil of the New World an original
and relatively advanced civilization, but he has left,
chiefly in the North, indisputable traces of his presence
in the most remote ages. Paleolithic implements have
been found in the valley of the Delaware, at Trenton,
New Jersey, and near Guanajuato in Mexico, so clearly
characterized that they cannot be mistaken, the situation
of which at the base of the Quaternary alluvions and
their coexistence with elephants and mastodons indicate
the existence of a race contemporaneous with that of the
gravels of the Somme, having the same industry and
doubtless the same manners and physical traits. Whence
could this primitive American race, sister to the one that
lived in Europe at the same date, have come, unless we
suppose a direct communication between the two conti
nents ? The difficulty such men would have in crossing
the Atlantic and the certainty which soundings give of
the antiquity of the ocean remove all possibility of our
believing either that the two continents were formerly
joined, or that one of them was discovered by some un
known Columbus navigating the ocean a hundred thou
sand years before the later one.
We are thus in the presence of the problem, always
coming up before us, and always escaping us, of the or
igin of the American man. Evidently it cannot be re
solved by invoking an accidental colonization of Asiatic
wanderers, or a shipwrecked company ; but it is one in
which we have to deal with primitive populations flowing
as in Europe by successive waves, and attesting the con
tinuous presence of man, whose gradual development and
extension have followed in America the same course as
on the old continent. The hypothesis of an immigration
from Asia by way of the Aleutian Islands to Alaska
442 APPENDIX.
might be acceptable, did not the certainty of the presence
of an indigenous American population in the Quaternary
age reduce it to the proportions of a secondary fact.
The same is the case with the relations — contradictory,
it is true, and therefore suspicious — which some have
attempted to establish between the monuments, statues,
and graphic signs of Central America and those of
Egypt and Buddhistic Asia. These analogies, aside from
their insufficiency, must fall before two paramount con
siderations : first, the certainty of the contemporaneous
ness of the American man with the great animals of the
Quaternary age ; and, second, the relative uniformity of
the copper-colored race, so like itself through the whole
extent of the continent, except in that part which is oc
cupied by the Esquimaux. The difficulty arises from the
fact that the monogenists, having in view a single birth
place and a single point of departure for the whole hu
man race, and placing neither in the New World, have
supposed America to have been colonized by European
or Asiatic immigrants following the direction of the par
allels of latitude. Emigration in this direction at once
meets an obstacle in the oceans, which grow wider the
farther South we go. The obstacle disappears if we give
up the idea of lateral emigrations, and suppose the move
ment to have taken place in the direction of the merid
ians from North to South. No obstacle of any kind offers
itself to such migrations ; and the relative uniformity of
the Americans, from one end of the continent to the
other, would never have excited astonishment, if we had
not been preoccupied with the idea of their introduction
at a later date.
We may remark, on this topic, that the extreme south
ern points of the three continents are occupied by races
which came originally, without doubt, from somewhere
else, and which are ranked, in Terra del Fuego, at the
Cape of Good Hope, and in Tasmania, among the lowest
HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 443
of the species. These races, advancing in front of the
others, have preserved the visible stamp of the relative
inferiority of the stock from which they were prematurely
detached. We have to believe, in effect, that these three
branches — Fuegians, Bushmen, and Tasmanians — so
little elevated in their physical, intellectual, and moral
traits, have gone and planted themselves so far away
only because the unoccupied space opened out before
them. Scouts for the rest of mankind, they have reached,
step by step, the extreme limits of the habitable land.
They must have occupied for the moment, at least, the
parts of the intermediate space, but they could not resist
the push of the stronger races, and they could not have
survived to our time, except under the condition of re
striction to a small area in the most remote tract of their
original domain. There is nothing surprising in the fact
that MM. Quatrefages and Hamy, having described the
most ancient European race of which we have the skulls,
that of Canstadt, should have found its analogies only
among these same natives of the extreme South — the
Bushmen and the Australians.
It will be seen that we are inclined to remove to the
circumpolar regions of the North the probable cradle of
primitive humanity. From there only could it have radi
ated as from a centre, to spread into several continents
at once, and to give rise to successive emigrations toward
the South. This theory agrees best with the presumed
march of the human races. It remains to be shown that
it is equally in accord with the most authentic and most
recent geological data, and that, besides man, it is appli
cable to the plants and animals which accompanied him,
and which have continued to be most closely associated
with him in the temperate regions which afterward became
the seat of his civilizing power.
The general laws of geogony favor this hypothesis in a
remarkable manner. To make it seem probable, we have
444 APPENDIX.
only to establish two essential points that will not be
seriously contested by any geologist. One is, that the
polar regions, which were covered with large trees, en
joyed a climate more temperate than that of Central
Europe, and were habitable and fertile to the eightieth
degree, underwent a slow and progressive cooling down
till the middle of the Tertiary period. Thence refrigera
tion made rapid progress till the ice gained exclusive
possession of the country south of them. Under such
circumstances, man as well as the animals and plants
would have to remove or perish — to emigrate step by
step, or find himself reduced to a daily more precarious
state of existence.
The second point is the relative stability of the exist
ing continental masses, and of their distribution around a
sea occupying the Arctic Pole ; while the other Pole was
occupied with a cap of land surrounded by an immense
ocean. The importance of the Arctic Pole in respect to
the production of animals and plants, and to their migra
tions, and the nullity of the other hemisphere in relation
to this feature result from such a grouping. The essen
tial point is, that there is nothing capricious in such an
arrangement of lands and seas, and that there have been,
if not always, at least from a very ancient period, emerged
lands occupying a considerable part of the northern hem
isphere, advancing very far toward the Pole, and describ
ing around the Arctic Sea a belt of more or less contigu
ous countries and islands. This is, in effect, what geol
ogy teaches. The changes, immersions, and emersions
have never been anything but partial and successive,
while the skeletons of the continents go back to the most
remote ages. There have always been a Europe, an
Asia, an America, and Arctic lands. We know certainly
that there have always been around the Arctic Pole ex
tensive territories, if not continents, long the home of the
same plants as the rest of the globe, and that, beginning
HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 445
with an epoch that corresponds with the end of the
Jurassic, the climate, at first as warm there as elsewhere,
has tended gradually to become colder. The depression
of temperature was at first manifested very slowly, and
was far from having attained its present degree in the
Tertiary ; for the trees that then grew in Greenland — the
sequoias, magnolias, and plane-trees — now attain their
full development in Southern Europe, and are not suited
with the climate of Central Europe. We are, then, as
sured of the ancient existence, near the Arctic Pole, of a
zone of lands covered with a rich vegetation. The perma
nent existence of a polar sea is none the less attested by
fossils from all parts of the region. The neighborhood
of the Pole was long habitable, and inhabited by man in
a time near that in which the vestiges of his industry be
gin to show themselves alike in Europe and America.
In passing thus from the Arctic lands to those bordering
on the polar circle, and through the latter into Asia,
Europe, and America, man would only have taken the
road which a host of plants and animal followed, either
before him or at the same time, and under the stress of
the same circumstances.
It is, in fact, by the aid of migrations from the neigh
borhood of the Pole that we can generally explain the
phenomenon of scattered or disjoined species, a phenom
enon identical with the one which man of the Old World
and man of the New World present when they are com
pared. Combining present notions with the indications
furnished by the fossils, we discover numerous examples
of disjunction — in which -allied forms, often hardly dis
tinguishable, have been distributed at the same time in
scattered regions, at extremely remote points in the
boreal hemisphere, without any apparent connection
along the parallels, to explain the common unit. Europe
attests by undeniable fossils that it had formerly a host
of vegetable types and forms that are now American,
446 APPENDIX,
which it could have received only from the extreme North.
It had, for example, magnolias, tulip-trees, sassafras,
maples, and poplars, comparable in all respects to those
which grow in the United States. The two plane-trees,
that of the West and that of Asia Minor, to which we
may add an extinct fossil European plane-tree, illustrate
the same phenomenon of dispersion. Europe in the
Tertiary period witnessed the growth of a ginko similar
to the one in the north of China. It had sequoias and a
bald cypress corresponding with the trees of those names
that are now growing in California and Louisiana. The
beech seems to have been growing in the Arctic circum-
polar zone before it was introduced and extended through
out the northern hemisphere. The same is doubtless the
case with the hemlock, of which distinguishable traces
have been found in Grinnell-land, above the eighty-sec
ond degree of latitude, of a date much earlier than that
of its introduction into Europe. The well-established
presence in both continents of many animals peculiar to
the northern hemisphere must be attributed to emigra
tions, if not from the Pole, at least from countries con
tiguous to the polar circle. This is obvious in the case
of the reindeer, bison, and stag; but it ought to be
equally true in respect to animals of more ancient times,
and although we have no other direct proofs of it than
the abundance of the remains of mammoths in upper Si
beria, the same law doubtless includes the elephants and
mastodons. We mean here the species of these two
genera which were propagated from the North to the
South, and were, in America and Europe, the companions
of primitive man. The connection of the continental
masses with their belt of hardly discontinuous lands
around the polar circle gives the key to all these phe
nomena. The cause on which they depend would be con
stantly producing radiations and consequently disjunc
tions of species and races, whatever kingdom we may
consider.
HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 447
Before leaving the questions that touch on the pre
sumed origin of man, we cannot refrain from speaking of
the relations which it has been sought to establish be
tween him and the pithecan apes. Primitive man, ac
cording to some authors of the transformist school, was
an anthropomorphic ape, perfected physically as to his
walk and erect attitude, intellectually by the development
of his cranial capacity, till the moment when reasoning,
or the faculty of abstraction and the power of using artic
ulate language, took in him the place of instinct. Nu
merous and undeniable anatomical or physiological anal
ogies of the human body and those of the more highly
organized monkeys, which have no tails nor callosities on
their paws, and whose faces and ways have something
singularly human, favor this system, at least in appear
ance. The pithecans have, however, other contiguities
than purely human ones. Their ways are rather analo
gous than directly assimilable to those of man ; with
other adaptations, they seem to have followed a wholly
different course of evolution. They are essentially climb
ers, while man is exclusively a walker, and has always
been predisposed to the erect position. The highest
monkeys, the anthropomorphous apes, walk badly and
with difficulty. When they leave the trees in which they
live, their position is a stooping one, and they bend down
their toes so as not to touch the ground with the soles of
their feet. We have, then, reason not to admit the simian
origin of man without decisive proofs. Moreover, the
pithecans seem to have been evolved in an inverse direc
tion from man. Rejoicing in the heat, they perish rapidly
when brought into the temperate zones, and this is espe
cially the case with the anthropoid apes. Thus, while
man, coming from the North, advances toward the South
only when the depression of temperature favors his prog
ress in that direction, the monkeys, to which a strong
heat is a vital element, were developed in an age when
448 APPENDIX.
Europe had a sub-tropical climate, and disappeared from
that continent as soon as the climate became temperate,
so that their departure concides with the arrival of man.
They fled South to find the heat they needed, precisely
when the diminution of the heat opened to man the
region from which it excluded his predecessors. The
necessity of placing the cradle of the pithecans in a hot
country enables us to separate the monkeys of the East
ern and Western continents into two distinct groups,
marked by differences in dentition important enough to
oblige us to assume an extreme antiquity for their sep
aration. Both are descended from the lemurians, now
represented only in Madagascar, but of which early Ter
tiary fossils are found in Europe. The most recent
lemurians in Europe are found at the end of the Eocene.
It is later, in the Miocene, and that not the lowest, that
we meet pithecans similar to those of the equatorial zone
of the Eastern continent. At this epoch, which was
nearly that of Oeningen and the Mollassic Sea, which
divided Europe from East to West, a subtropical climate
still prevailed in the centre of the continent, and the
palm-trees extended up into Bohemia, along the northern
banks of the great interior sea. By favor of this tem
perature the monkeys occupied Europe to near the forty-
fifth degree, but without going above it, to disappear for
ever as soon as it became cool enough for men and
elephants.
The Mesopithecus Penteliti, of which M. Gaudry has dis
covered twenty-five individuals at Pikermi, was small,
walked on its four paws, and lived on twigs and leaves.
The Dryopithecus of St. Gaudens had the characteristics
of the highest anthropomorphs, with the bestial face of
the gorilla ; but it is to this animal that M. Gaudry is in
clined to attribute the flints, intentionally chipped, ac
cording to the Abbe Bourgeois, of the Beauce limestone,
at Thenay in the St. Gaudens geognostic horizon. The
HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 449
Pliopithecus of Sansan (Gers) resembles a gibbon. To
find the present analogues of the Pliopithecus and Dryo-
pithecus of Miocene Europe, it is necessary to go across
the tropic of Cancer to about 12° North latitude, or more
than thirty degrees South of the locality of these fossils.
If, as is probable, the same interval existed between the
perimeter frequented by the European anthropomorphs
and the natal region in which man was originally con
fined, we shall find the latter in the latitude of Greenland,
at 70° or 75°. This is indeed an hypothetical calcula
tion, but it is based on a double argument hard to refute.
We can reach almost the same conclusion by a little
different reasoning. The abundance of large-flaked in
struments in the contiguous valleys of the Somme and the
Seine marks the existence at that point of external con
ditions evidently favorable to the diffusion of man, whose
race was then multiplying for the first time. The flora
of that epoch, as observed near Fontainebleau, indicates
the presence of conditions similar to those now existing
in the south of France, near the forty-second degree of
latitude. Now, to reach, starting from the forty-second
degree, the nearly tropical regions where palm, camphor,
and southern laurel trees are associated together, we have
to go twelve or fifteen degrees South, to the thirtieth or
twenty-eighth degree of latitude, where we see the same
climatological conditions existing as prevailed in Miocene
Europe when it was hardly warm enough for the anthro
pomorphic apes. Between these conditions and those
which seem to have been first favorable to the growth of
the human race there existed a space of twelve or fifteen
degrees of latitude. But when palm-trees were growing
near Prague, and camphor-trees grew as far North as
Dantzic, man, if he existed then, might have lived with
out inconvenience beyond or around the Arctic Circle,
within equal reach of North America and Europe, which
he was destined to people. — Translated for the Popular
Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes.
45O APPENDIX.
SECTION III. — THE RECEPTION ACCORDED TO "THE
TRUE KEY."
As indicated in the text, the view of Ancient Cosmol
ogy presented in chapter first of Part fourth is entirely at
variance with that of all our standard authorities. Pro
fessor Packard, of Yale College, remarks, "If it is true,
all our books and maps are wrong, and we must admit
that all scholars have been mistaken in their understand
ing of the ancient records." In like manner, one of the
foreign periodicals editorially observes, " If it is correct,
a most striking proof is given of the possibility of many
successive generations of archaeologists, scientists, and
scholars failing to catch the entire drift and spirit of an
cient legends and literature in their cosmic teachings
and relations." Under these circumstances the ordinary
reader seems entitled to some further information before
being asked to give it his adherence.
The new view, then, was first published in the columns
of "The Independent," New York, August 25, 1881. In
March of the following year a second and enlarged edi
tion appeared in " The Boston University Year Book,"
vol. ix. Soon after a third edition was issued as a pam
phlet by Messrs. Ginn and Heath, of Boston. In each
case it was entitled " The True Key to Ancient Cosmol
ogy and Mythical Geography," and was illustrated by the
diagram which stands as frontispiece to this work.
Copies of the paper in each of its successive editions
were promptly forwarded — usually with a brief personal
note — to the most competent scholars in the universities
of Athens, Rome, Berlin, Leipsic, Heidelberg, Bonn,
Leyden, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Bel
fast, and Dublin. As might be expected an interesting
and varied correspondence ensued. Of many of the let
ters the writer does not feel that he has the right to
RECEPTION OF TRUE KEY. 451
make any public use ; but in printing the following ex
tracts he believes that he violates no proprieties.
A. H. Sayce, of the University of Oxford, one of the
most distinguished of living professors of Comparative
Philology, after reading a preliminary sketch, wrote to
the author as follows : —
Provisionally, I may say that your view seems to me emi
nently reasonable and likely to clear up several difficulties.
Certainly it throws light on the voyage of Odysseus, more
particularly on the visit to Hades.
I look forward to the appearance of your book, which will
be of great value to students of the past.
In more recent communications Professor Sayce has
used still stronger expressions of personal acquiescence.
The following are all from letters written before the
publication of " Homer's Abode of the Dead."
Right Hon. William E. Gladstone, author of "Ho
meric Studies," "Juventus Mundi," "Homeric Synchro
nism," etc. : —
I have received with much interest and pleasure the com
munications you have been good enough to address to me on
the Homeric Cosmology. Very long ago I became convinced
that Homer proceeded, not on the idea commonly assigned to
him, of the earth as a plane, but on the conception of a spher
ical or convex surface. My views have long been set forth :
fundamentally, I am at one with you, and when (if ever) my
time of leisure shall arrive, I shall try to learn whether, in the
points where you differ from or go beyond me, you have not
been the more thorough and accurate of the two.
Robert K. Douglas, of the British Museum, and Pro
fessor of Chinese in King's College, London : —
I read your Key with great interest ; and, without having
made any special study of the subject, I must say that to my
mind it explains most satisfactorily the Homeric Cosmology.
Richard Dacre Archer-Hind, Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge, England : —
452 APPENDIX.
I must say that your explanation of ancient cosmology
seems to me very simple and natural. It certainly throws a
flood of light upon several points which were before very ob
scure. I am glad to hear that it is approved by so distin
guished an Orientalist as Dr. Rost, Librarian of the India Of
fice, London.
C. P. Tiele, D. D., Professor of the History of Relig
ions in the University of Leyden, Holland : —
After perusing your paper a second time, I cannot but ex
press my opinion that your hypothesis is very plausible and
ingenious. The conception of the world as a sphere is not so
young as is generally thought. ... I think you are right in
identifying the wide Olympus with the highest heaven. . . .
Your description agrees very well with the ancient cosmogra
phy of the Babylonians. With you I am satisfied that there
is no real difference between mythical Olympus and heaven,
and that all earthly Olymps (as there are several of them) are
only localizations of the same heavenly abode of the gods.
Howard Crosby, D. D., LL. D., ex-Chancellor of the
University of New York : —
Your Key to Ancient Cosmology is to me most satisfactory.
I believe you have made a valuable discovery.
W. D. Whitney, LL. D., Professor of Sanskrit and Com
parative Philology, Yale College : —
I have looked with some care through your exposition of
your view respecting the ancient conceptions of the cosmos,
and find it very ingenious and suggestive, and worthy of care
ful comparison with the expressions of ancient authors on the
subject.
Dr. Charles R. Lanman, Professor of Sanskrit, Har
vard University : —
The Key I have read once more, and think it is very simple,
ingenious and adequate for the explanation of a great variety
of heretofore perplexing allusions.
W. S. Tyler, D. D., LL. D., Professor of the Greek
Language and Literature, Amherst College : —
RECEPTION OF TRUE KEY. 453
Permit me to thank you for the paper. Perhaps no one key
will unlock all the chambers of the labyrinth of ancient cos
mology and mythical geography. But I believe yours comes
the nearest to it of any that has yet been found.
William A. Packard, Professor of the Latin Language
and Literature, College of New Jersey, Princeton : —
Dr. Warren's pamphlet gives the result of ingenious and
able research, which claims very careful consideration. It
does seem to act very widely as a solvent in interpreting an
cient cosmogonies. Its elucidation of Homeric expressions is
very striking.
Stephen D. Peet, Editor of " American Antiquarian
and Oriental Journal : " —
I believe that you have struck a very rich field in your pam
phlet on the ancient cosmology. I have long surmised that
there was something back of the astrology of the ancients
which had exerted a great influence on the religious concep
tions, and even on the literary and speculative thoughts of the
ancients, but have to thank you for putting together the facts
so as to discover the key.
J. Henry Thayer, D. D., late Professor of Greek and
N. T. Interpretation, Andover Theological Seminary,
now Professor of the same in Harvard University Divin
ity School : —
Allow me to express my great interest in your Key to An
cient Cosmology. It gives one a sense of relief amounting
to satisfaction at its very first perusal. I shall take great in
terest in teaching it.
James Freeman Clarke, D. D., author of "Ten Great
Religions," etc. : —
It seems to me to throw much light on many passages in
the classic writers. ... I cannot help thinking that your view
will be a key to unlock many obscure passages.
The seven following extracts fairly illustrate the mass
of the communications received since the publication of
" Homer's Abode of the Dead," which paper was issued in
454 APPENDIX.
advance of the present volume simply as a further illus
tration of the correctness and utility of "The True Key."
Each is from the pen of a European scholar of first rank,
and the last of them from one of the most widely known
of German Egyptologists. Not having as yet permission
to use the names of the writers, they are here withheld.
I thank you very much for sending me the " Boston Univer
sity Year Book," containing your interesting article on the
Underworld of Homer.
Homeric interpretation long and (I think) absurdly placed
the way to the Underworld in the West ; but I am glad at
least to acknowledge that from the West — that is, from you
and your country — much light has been thrown upon the Un
derworld of Homer.
In 1868 I went a long way, in a work then published, to
wards the doctrine that the entrance to the Underworld was
beneath the solid earth-mass, as, in 1858, I had endeavored
to destroy the prevailing notion about the road by the West.
I regard with amazement the mass of false interpretations
of Homer which a quarter of a century ago I found prevail
ing, and of which I think we are gradually getting rid.
One very great source of aid has been the opening up of
Egyptian and Assyrian knowledge, and from this quarter I
believe that more aid will yet be drawn.
With you I think that the supposed inconsistencies of
Homer about the Underworld are really ascribable wholly, or
in the main, to his interpreters.
Many thanks for your letter and for the interesting paper in
the " Boston University Year Book " which has followed it.
The illustration of your theory which is furnished by the Voy
age of the Egyptian Sindbad is very striking, and must be
most gratifying to you. I can find no objection to your view
except those suggested by the original meaning of the words
Amenti and Erebos (Assyrian eribu = ^erebh) ; and I am
therefore inclined to subscribe to all that Professor Tiele has
written you in regard to it. That in Homer the earth is sup
posed to be a sphere, with Olympos above and Tartaros below,
clears up every difficulty.
RECEPTION OF TRUE KEY. 455
I read your paper with great interest and pleasure. Now
again you have put your favorite thesis so clearly and forcibly
that I incline more and more to your opinion. I only wait,
before surrendering, for some leisure to go accurately over the
principal facts and citations.
I have read your paper with great interest. Your ex
planation makes things clear, at any rate, though I must read
the Odyssey again before venturing to affirm that you see
things as Homer saw them.
Accept my best thanks for your "Year Book" for 1883,
with its excellent and interesting dissertation upon " Homer's
Abode of the Dead." Not being a Homerologist, I am hardly
entitled to express an opinion, but your argument seems to me
conclusive.
Your paper has an especial interest for me, inasmuch as it
shows that there was less difference between the cosmography
of Homer and the cosmographies of his successors than we
had been brought to suppose. (The modest writer of the fore
going is one of the most eminent Hellenists of Cambridge,
Eng.}
I have to thank you for your new contribution to our
knowledge with reference to the conceptions of the ancients
as to the shape of the earth. Your paper on the " Navel of
the Earth " is full of interesting and important information.
My only doubt is whether the time has come for such wide
generalizations as you propose. However, our science wants
centrifugal as well as centripetal forces, and a discoverer must
not be afraid of places marked " Dangerous."
HOCHGEEHRTER HERR COLLEGA :
Freundlichen Dank fiir Ihre giitigen Zeilen und den sie
begleitenden interessanten Aufsatz. Ihre Hypothese ist hochst
iiberraschend, und wiirde, sollte sich ihre Richtigkeit auf ganz
feste Fiisse stellen lassen, in der That mit einem Male Ord-
nung in eine besonders krauss verwirrte Frage bringen. . . .
Sobald es Ihnen nachzuweisen gelingt, dass in der Volksvor-
stellung der Griechen aus friiherer Zeit die Erde kugelformig
APPENDIX.
war, werden Sie die Schlacht gewonnen haben, und Niemand
wird es fiirder wagen diirfen die Stimme gegen Ihre Ansicht
zu erheben. Es will mir nicht unmoglich scheinen, Spuren
solcher Anschauung zu finden, zumal da die Egypter ganz
gewiss schon friih Kenntniss von der Kugelgestalt der Erde
besassen. . . . Trotz dieser Bedenken hat mich Ihr Aufsatz
lebhaft interessirt. Leider werde ich aus Gesundheitsriick-
sichten den Orientalisten-Congress zu Leyden nicht besuchen
diirfen ; es sollte mich aber freuen, wenn die von Ihnen so
geistreich angeregte interessante Frage wahrend desselben
zur Discussion kame.
More and more decided are the latest verdicts of Amer
ican scholars. The following are a half dozen specimens
from a considerable collection.
The Rev. A. P. Peabody, D. D., LL. D., Professor
Emeritus in Harvard University : —
I have read not only with pleasure, but also with profit, your
essay on Homer's "Abode of the Dead." Your theory ac
cords with my impression, and makes that impression — before
vague and with less than sufficient reason — definite and well
grounded.
C. C. Everett, D. D., Dean of the Theological Faculty
of Harvard University, and Professor of Comparative
Theology : —
So far as Homer is concerned, your view is certainly fitted
to remove grave difficulties.
J. R. Boise, D. D., LL. D., Professor in the Baptist
Union Theological Seminary, Chicago : —
The able and learned article on Homer's "Abode of the
Dead " has interested me deeply, and I believe your view is
the correct one.
Edwin Post, Ph. D., Professor of Latin, Indiana As-
bury University, Greencastle, Ind. : —
I have recently re-read your monograph on Ancient Cos*
RECEPTION OF TRUE KEY. 457
mology, and I am more and more convinced that your startling
hypothesis will be verified more and more by comparative
study.
George Zabriskie Gray, S. T. D., Dean of the Episco
pal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass. : —
I have read your treatise with great interest, and desire to
thank you for your work. It seems to me that your theory
meets the test of all theories, that of accounting for the facts
that cannot otherwise be reconciled. Besides thus reconcil
ing the statements of ancient authors regarding the world and
the underworld, your theory enables us to see in their writings
many new and fruitful suggestions regarding matters hitherto
unnoticed and unsuspected. Trusting that this treatise may
receive the attention and currency which it so eminently de
serves, I remain, etc., etc.
Rev. A. B. Hyde, D. D., Professor of Greek in Alle
gheny College, Meadville, Pa. : —
I seem to have found in you a guide in a " mighty maze."
Homer has been so long waiting, not for an observer, but for
some one to teach us how to observe, a seer to show us how
to see. The more I reflect upon your scheme of his cosmol
ogy, the more I am struck with its beauty and accuracy ; that
is, its harmony with the Homeric utterances.
The following does not exactly belong in this place,
but, coming from an inspired prophet of God, it seems
entitled to a somewhat exceptional treatment. The writ
er's name indicates a Polish nationality, and his peculiar
use of the German language somewhat confirms the sup
position that he was not to the manner born. His au
thoritative announcement of the early restoration at the
North Pole of the " curseless " primeval Paradise is well
calculated to relieve any undue melancholy into which
any of our converts, meditating upon the lost Eden, may
chance to fall : —
KONIGSBERG, IN PREUSSEN, den 2*en Mai, 1884.
WERTHGESCHATZTER HERR PROFESSOR! — Mit freudigem
Staunen lese ich heute in der hiesigen Hartungschen Zeitung
folgende Mittheilung : " Die Lage des Paradieses ausfindig zu
machen, das ist jetzt das Thema um welches sich das Ge-
458 APPENDIX.
sprach in den eleganten Salons der geistigen Aristokratie Bos
ton's, des amerikanischen Athens' dreht, seitdem Professor
Dr. Warren der dortigen Universitat, in einer langen wissen-
schaftlichen Abhandlung bewiesen, dass nur allein am Nord-
pol das Paradies gelegen haben kann. Den Einwand wie ein
Mensch am Nordpol bei solcher Kalte Adam heitzen konnte,
widerlegt der fromme und gelehrte Mann dadurch, dass es je-
denfalls friiher dort warmer gewesen sei. Dr. Warren ist sehr
dafiir, eine Expedition auszuschicken, um seine auf ' wissen-
schaftliche Voranssetzungen ' gestiitzte Schlussfolgerungen zu
beweisen."
Diese Mittheilung ist mir aus folgendem Grimde eine freu-
dige-interessante weil, wie Sie es glauben, dass am Anfange
der Menschheit das fluchlose Paradies am Nordpol stattgefun-
den, ich es glaube, dass ein solch fluchloses und noch herrlich-
eres Paradies eben auch daselbst am Nordpol in nicht ferner
Zukunft stattfinden wird.
Ich bitte Sie nun ergebenst, Ihre diese Wissenschaft be-
treffenden Griinde mir ehestens gefalligst mittheilen zu wollen,
um zu ersehen, ob diese Ihre Griinde diese wichtigen Vergan-
genheits-Zustande betreffend, mit den meinigen, die eine noch
wichtigere Zukunft betreffen, auf eben demselben Standpunkt
der heiligen Schrift und der Geographic beruhen. Ich bin
kein Studirter der Weltwissenschaft, also auch nicht der Ge
ographic, und ebenso wenig ein menschlich Studirter der The-
ologie, jedoch aber ein " gottlich-studirter " Theologe. Kraft
dieser meiner gottlichen Ausbildung oder unmittelbar von
Gott mir gegebenen Offenbarung — die auch Blicke in die
Tiefen der Gottheit mitsichfuhrt, ist auch dieses bis vor ein-
igen Jahren verborgen gewesene Geheimniss der nahen Zu
kunft mir entsiegelt in Uebereinstimmung der heiligen Schrift
und der Geographic.
Auf diese religiose und natiirliche Wahrheit sicher mich
stiitzend und berufend, bin ich mit Ihrer Anschauung ganz
iibereinstimmend, dass am Nordpol das in Folge des Siinden-
falles zerstorte Paradies stattgefunden hat.
Ich hoffe dass wir beiderseits auf dem Grunde dieser un-
serer Uebereinstimmung in nahere Bekanntschaft mit einan-
der nach Gottes Wohlgefallen kommen werden. In diesem
Vertrauen zu I linen erwarte ich eine baldige Erfiillung meiner
eben an Sie gerichteten Bitte, — mit Hochachtung,
Ergebenst, •
HINDU COSMOLOGY. 459
SECTION IV. — THE EARTH AND WORLD OF THE
HINDUS.
(Illustrating pp. 129-733 ; 148-154; 183, etc.)
THAT the mythological cosmos of the modern Hindus
was originally constructed upon the basis of a geocentric
system of the planetary heavens I cannot doubt. Its
" concentric oceans " are simply the interplanetary spaces
mythologically pictured and described. Its "concentric
continents " are those invisible solid, concentric, " crys
talline spheres " which revolved about the common axis
of the Pythagoreo-Ptolemaic universe, and were presided
over by the different visible planets. In both systems
the Earth is not only the centre of the planetary revo
lution, but also the centre of each planetary sphere itself.
How entirely incorrect the flat-world interpretation or
dinarily given us is 1 could hardly be more forcibly shown
than it is in the following extract : " Priya Vrata, by the
wheel of whose car the Earth [or better, the World] was
divided into seven continents, had thirteen male chil
dren. Six of these embraced an ascetic life ; the rest
ruled the seven divisions of the Earth [World.] To Ag-
nidhra was assigned the Jambu-dwipa [the Earth] ; to
Medhatithi, Plaksha; to Vapushmat, Salmali ; to Jyotish-
mat, Kusa ; to Dyutimat, Krauncha ; to Bhavya, Saka ;
and to Savala, Pushkara. With the exception of the
sovereign of Jambu each of the six other kings is said to
have had seven sons, among whom he divided his king
dom into seven equal parts. These seven divisions in each
of the six continents are separated by seven chains of
mountains and seven rivers lying breadthwise, and placed
with such inclinations with respect to one another that if a
straight line be drawn through any chain of mountains or
1 See picture in Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers about the
Heathen. New York, 1849 : P- 4^«
460 APPENDIX.
rivers and its corresponding mountains or rivers on the other
continents, and produced toward the central island, it would
meet the centre of the Earth.'1'' l
All Puranic descriptions of the Earth are by no means
consistent with each other, but the following from the
Vishnu Purana can readily be understood if read in the
light of the illustrative cuts already given : — •
Parasara. — You shall hear from me, Maitreya, a brief
account of the earth. A full detail I could not give you
in a century.
The seven great insular continents are Jambu, Plaksha,
Salmali, Kusa, Krauncha, Saka, and Pushkara ; and they
are surrounded, severally, by seven great seas, — the sea
of saltwater (Lavana), of sugar-cane juice (Ikshu), of wine
(Sura), of clarified butter (Sarpis), of curds (Dadhi), of
milk (Dugdha), and of fresh water (Jala).
Jambu-dwipa is in the centre of all these. And in the
centre of this (continent) is the golden mountain Meru.
The height of Meru is eighty-four thousand Yojanas ; and
its depth below (the surface of the earth) is sixteen
(thousand). Its diameter at the summit is thirty-two
(thousand Yojanas), and at its base sixteen thousand ;
so that this mountain is like the seed-cup of the lotos of
the earth.
The boundary mountains (of the earth) are Himavat,
Hemakiita, and Nishadha, which lie south (of Meru) ;
and Nila, £weta, and Sringin ; which are situated to the
north (of it). The two central ranges (those next to
Meru, or Nishadha and Nila) extend for a hundred thou
sand (Yojanas, running east and west). Each of the oth
ers diminishes ten thousand (Yojanas, as it lies more
remote from the centre).2 They are two thousand (Yo-
1 Babu Shome, " Physical Errors of Hinduism." Selections from
the Calctitta Review, No. xv., April, 1882.
2 In our diagram of the Hindu Varshas, p. 152, the length of the
outer partition-ranges diminishes at about the rate here required.
In the only other I have ever seen, — one shown me by Professor
HINDU COSMOLOGY. 461
janas) in height, and as many in breadth. The Varshas
(or countries between these ranges) are : Bharata (India),
south of the Himavat mountains ; next, Kimpurusha,
between Himavat and Hemakiica ; north of the latter,
and south of Nishadha, is Harivarsha : north of Meru is
Ramyaka, extending from the Nila or blue mountains to
the Sweta (or white) mountains ; Hiranmaya lies between
the Sweta and Sringin ranges ; and Uttarakuru is beyond
the latter, following the same direction as Bharata. Each
of these is nine thousand (Yojanas) in extent.
Ilavrita is of similar dimensions, but in the centre of
it is the golden mountain Meru ; and the country extends
nine thousand (Yojanas) in each direction from the four
sides of the mountain. There are four mountains in this
Varsha, formed as buttresses to Meru, each ten thou
sand Yojanas in elevation. That on the east is called
Mandara ; that on the south, Gandhamadana ; that on
the west, Vipula ; and that on the north, Suparswa. On
each of these stands severally a Kadamba-tree, a Jambu-
tree, a Pippala, and a Vata ; each spreading over eleven
hundred (Yojanas, and towering aloft like) banners on
the mountains. From the Jambu-tree the insular con
tinent Jambu-dwipa derives its appellation. The apples
Max Miiller in a modern Sanskrit tractate, whose author's name I
regret to have lost, — all the ranges were represented as parallel
with the Nila and Nishadha. Moreover, as the whole surface of
Jambu-dwipa was represented as a circular flat disk, the second of the
two successive outer ranges was much more than the required one
tenth shorter than its predecessor. Besides this, Jambu-dwipa is re
peatedly described in this same Purana as a globe, and should be so
treated in all graphic representations.
Postscript. Since the above was written a long search for Capt. Wil-
ford's diagrams in vol. viii. of the Asiatic Researches (London, 1808)
has been crowned with success. His perpetual vacillation between
what he considers the primitive and proper flat earth of " the Pau-
ranics " and the spherical earth of the astronomers is the chief source
of his manifold embarrassments. A second and subordinate source
of endless trouble is his effort to interpret mythical geography in the
terms of geography actual.
APPENDIX.
of that tree are as large as elephants. When they are
rotten they fall upon the crest of the mountain ; and
from their expressed juice is formed the Jambu river, the
waters of which are drunk by the inhabitants; and, in
consequence of drinking of that stream, they pass their
days in content and health, being subject neither to per
spiration, to foul odors, to decrepitude, nor organic decay.
The soil on the banks of the river, absorbing the Jambu
juice, and being dried by gentle breezes, becomes the
gold termed Jambunada (of which) the ornaments of the
Siddhas (are fabricated). The country of Bhadraswa
lies on the east of Meru, and Ketumala, on the west;
and between these two is the region Ilavrita. On the
east (of the same) is the forest Chaitraratha ; the Gan-
dhamadana (wood) is on the south ; (the forest of) Vai-
bhiaja is on the west ; and (the grove of India, or) Man-
dana is on the north. There are also four great lakes,
the waters of which are partaken of by the gods, called
Arudoda, Mahabhadra, Asitoda, and Manasa.
The principal mountain ridges which project from the
base of Meru, like filaments from the root of the lotos,
are, on the east, Sitanta, Mukunda, Kurari, Malyavat,
and Vaikanka ; on the south, Trikiita, Sisira, Patanga,
Ruchaka, and Nishadha; on the west £ikhivasas, Vai-
durya, Kapila, Gandhamadana, and Jarudhi ; and on the
north Sankhakuta, &ishabha, Hamsa. Naga, and Kalan-
jara. These and others extend from between the inter
vals in the body, or from the heart, of Meru.
On the summit of Meru is the vast city of Brahma, ex-
tending fourteen thousand leagues, and renowned in
heaven ; and around it, in the cardinal points and the
intermediate quarters, are situated the stately cities of
Indra and the other regents of the spheres. The capital
of Brahma is inclosed by the river Ganges, which, issu
ing from the foot of Vishnu, and washing the lunar orb,
falls, here, from the skies, and after encircling the city
HINDU COSMOLOGY. 463
divides into four mighty rivers flowing in opposite direc
tions. These rivers are the 3ita, the Alakananda, the
Chakshu, and the Bhadra. The first, falling upon the
tops of the inferior mountains, on the east side of Meru,
flows over their crests, and passes through the country of
BhadrasVa, to the ocean. The Alakananda flows south,
to (the country of) Bharata, and, dividing into seven
rivers on the way, falls into the sea. The Chakshu falls
into the sea, after traversing all the western mountains
and passing through the country of Ketumala. And the
Bhadra washes the country of the Uttarakurus, and emp
ties itself into the northern ocean.
Meru, then, is confined between the mountains Nfla
and Nishadha (on the north and south), and between
Malyavat and Gandhamadana (on the west and east). It
lies between them, like the pericarp of a lotos.
The countries of Bharata, Ketumala, Bhadras'wa, and
Uttarakuru lie, like leaves of the lotos of the world, ex
terior to the boundary mountains. Jathara and Deva-
kiita are two mountain ranges, running north and south,
and connecting the two chains of Nfla and Nishadha.
Gandhamadana and Kailasa extend, east and west, eighty
Yojanas in breadth, from sea to sea. Nishadha and Pari-
yatra are the limitative mountains on the west, stretch
ing, like those on the east, between the Nfla and Nis
hadha ranges. And the mountains Trisfinga and Ja-
rudha are the northern limits (of Meru), extending, east
and west, between the two seas. Thus I have repeated
to you the mountains described by great sages as the
boundary mountains, situated in pairs on each of the
four sides of Meru.
Those also which have been mentioned as the fila
ment mountains (or spurs), 3itanta and the rest, are ex
ceedingly delightful. The valleys embosomed amongst
them are favorite resorts of the Siddhas and Charanas.
And there are situated upon them agreeable forests and
464 APPENDIX.
pleasant cities, embellished with the palaces of Lakshmi,
Vishriu, Agni, Siirya, and other deities, and peopled by
celestial spirits ; whilst the Yakshas, Rakshasas, Daityas}
and Danavas pursue their pastimes in the vales.
These, in short, are the regions of Paradise, or Swarga,
the seats of the righteous, and where the wicked do not
arrive even after a hundred births. In (the country of)
Bhadraswa, Vishriu resides as Hayasiras (the horse -
headed) ; in Ketumala, as Varaha (the boar) • in Bha-
rata, as the tortoise (Kurma) ; in Keru, as the fish
(Matsya) ; in his universal form, everywhere : for Hari
pervades all places. He is the supporter of all things ;
he is all things. In the eight realms of Kimpurusha
and the rest (or all exclusive of Bharata), there is no
sorrow, nor weariness, nor anxiety, nor hunger, nor ap
prehension j their inhabitants are exempt from all in
firmity and pain, and live (in uninterrupted enjoyment)
for ten or twelve thousand years. Indra never sends
rain upon them ; for the earth abounds with water. In
those places there is no distinction of Kfita, Treta, or
any succession of ages. In each of these Varshas there
are, respectively, seven principal ranges of mountains,
from which, O best of Brahmans, hundreds of rivers take
their rise. (From H. H. Wilson's Translation of the Vish
nu Pur ana.) 1
For further accounts of Puranic geography see Wil-
ford's " Sacred Isles in the West," ch. iii. ; " Geographical
Extracts from the Puranas," in " Asiatic Researches,"
vol. viii.
1 The parentheses and vowel marks in the foregoing are Wilson's.
THE VEDIC WORLD-PILLAR. 46$
SECTION V. — GRILL ON THE WORLD-PILLAR OF
THE RIG VEDA.
(Illustrating pp. 136 ; 141; 144-146; 152; 155-158, etc. Also the
Pillar of Atlas, pp. 350-358.}
" MIT diesem Namen — Skambha — der so viel als
Pfeiler, Saule, bedeutet, verbindet sich die Vorstellung
eines den Himmel oder die Welt tragenden Korpers.
Diese Vorstellung hat innerhalb des Veda eine allmah-
lische Ausbildung erfahren. In Rigveda ist der Skambha
urspriinglich als eigentliche Saule, als holzerner Pfeiler
gedacht und ist so im Grund nur ein concreter Ausdruck
fiir des Himmels Veste (vgl. IV., 13, 5 ; VIII., 41, TO).
Es findet sich aber schon daneben die lebendigere Auffas-
sung, dass derselbe ein Pflanzenstengel ist, wobei der
My thus an die Somapflanze denkt. Hierbei erscheint
der Skambha als mit Saft gefiillt (apurna aih$u, vgl. IX.,
74, 2 ; 86, 46), und es ist damit ein Bild des Himmels
gewonnen, das das doppelte Moment des Festen (Auf-
rechten) und Fliissigen gliicklich in sich vereinigt. Diese
Anschauung tritt nun viel entwickelter im Atharvaveda
wieder auf. Hier ist der Skambha zunachst als der Eine
Grundpfeiler und Tragbalken des Weltgebaudes geschil-
dert in den alle einzelnen Theile desselben eingelassen
sind, und der das gesammte Queergebalke durchzieht
(avi$, pravif). Himmel. Luft und Erde mit all ihren
Korpern und Elementen, mit dern ganzen Kreislauf ihrer
Phanomene und Katastrophen, — alles ruht auf dieser
Unterlage, vom Pragapati darauf gegriindet (X., 7, 7, 2 ff.,
35). Auch die Gesammtheit der Gotter wird von dieser
Weltsaule getragen (X., 7, 13). An diese architektonische
Auffassung reiht sich auch im Ath. Veda die Vorstellung
eines Baumes, von dessen Aesten die Rede ist, dessen
Aesten die Gotter selbst sind (vgl. X., 7, 21, 22, 38), und
der einen Schatz bergen soil. Selbst in animalischer Form
30
466 APPENDIX.
wird der Skambha dargestellt, so dass seine einzelnen
Korpertheile unterschieden werden (X., 18, 19, 33, 34).
Ja schliesslich geht der Mythus so weit, dass er diesen
Weltpfeiler oder Weltbaum nicht bloss beseelt denkt, son-
dern geradezu mit der Weltseele (Purusha) mit dem obers-
ten Brahman, mit dem Praga pati (dem Weltschopfer)
identificirt (X., 7, 15, 17, 8, 2), und die hierin enthaltene
Personification tritt noch entschiedener zu Tag, wenn der
Skambha sogar mit Indra zusammenfallt (X., 7, 29, 30).
Mit Recht ist der elementare Skambha mit dem Atlas der
Griechen und den Saulen des Herakles verglichen wor-
den. Wie aber M. Miiller angesichts des Skambha und
der oben vorgefiihrten Zeugnisse die Behauptung aufstel-
len kann : " Es ist kein Beleg dafiir vorhanden, dass ir-
gend etwas der Auffassung der Yggdrasil ahnliches je den
vedischen Dichtern in den Sinn, kam " (Essays, Deutsch,
II., 184 [Chips, vol. ii., 204]), ist mir unverstandlich.
Vergleiche auch die Behandlung des Skambhamythus bei
de Gubernatis Mithologia Vedica, pp. 273-299.
Aus der spateren Entwicklung der indischen Mytholo-
gie nenne ich noch besonders die Darstellung des Welt-
baumes oder himmlischen Baumes in dem paradiesischen,
bei der Quirlung des Oceans entstandenen, Parigata (Ko-
rallenbaum, Erythrina Indica), der durch Krishna auf
Wunsch seiner Gattin Satjabhama Indra entrissen wurde.
Die Beschreibung des Baumes, sowie seiner Entfiihrung
erscheint im Purina (Vishnu, Bhagavata) noch einfach
(vgl. Vish. P. bei H. H. Wilson, pp. 585-588), sehr aus-
fiihrlich dagegen und mit einzelnen Abweichungen im
Harivaific.a. Er hat nach diesem die Eigenschaft, "de
satisfaire tous les de'sirs. Vous n'aurez qu'a penser, et
aussitot par la vertu de celle fleur, qui saura s'entendre et
se multiplier, vous aurez des guirlandes, des couronnes,
des festons, des parterres entirs. Cette fleur remedie a la
faim, a la soif, a la maladie, a la vieillesse, etc. Bien plus,
source de bonheur et de gloire elle est encore un gage de
HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD. 467
vertu ; intelligente et raisonnable, elle perd son eclat avec
rimpie, et le conserve avec la personne attachee a son de
voir." — Siehe, 'Harivansa,' trad, par Langlois, II., 3, 12.
(J. Grill, "Die Erzvdter der Menschheit" vol. i, p. 358, 9.)
SECTION VI. — HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD.1
{Illustrating Chapters i. and vii. in Part Four ; Chapter it. in Part
Six, and other passages.}
So herrscht gleich uber den Ort wo die Unterwelt zu denken set ein merkwur-
diger Zvuiespalt. — PRELLER.
Bei Homer ist eine doppelte A nsicht von der Lage des Todtenreiches zu erken*
nen, einma-l unter der Erde, und dann iviederum auf der Oberfliiche des Bodens
in dem ewigeti Dunkel jenseits des ivestlichen Ocean. Die A nsichten voti den
beiden Hades fliessen bestandig durcheinander. So weit aber die mil jedem ver-
bundenen Vorstellungen zu sondern und einzeln aufzufassen moglich ist, mussen
ivir sie darzulegen im Folgenden versuchen. — VOLCKER.
WHERE does Homer locate the realm of Hades ?
In the whole broad field of Homeric scholarship it
would be difficult to find a more fascinating question.
Few have been more written upon. The literature of the
subject is itself almost a library. No mythologist, no
commentator upon the poet, no class-room interpreter
even, can evade the question ; and yet, in their answers,
the Homeric authorities of all modern times, whatever
their nationality, present only a pitiable spectacle of help
less bewilderment. Classifying these various interpreters
according to the answers they respectively give to the
question propounded, they stand as follows : —
First, a class who content themselves with the general
assertion that the earth of Homer was a " flat disk," and
that his Hades, like that of the ancients generally, was
undoubtedly conceived of as a dark recess or cavern in
the bosom of this earth-disk. Anything in the Odyssey
1 Printed in advance in The Boston University Year Book, vol. x.
468 APPENDIX.
or elsewhere inconsistent with this view is simply a play
of poetic fancy.
Second, a class — if class it be — who say with the
genial Wilhelm Jordan, " Das Hadesreich der Odyssee
ist die von der Sonne abgekehrte Riickseite der Erd-
scheibe, die wriyQov, Gegenerde, eines weit spateren Zeit-
alters. Von der £ei'8w/)os apovpa und vom Gotterhimmel
aus betrachtet bleibt es allerdings Unterwelt, wro KtvOeo-L
ycuas, aber nicht als Erdinneres, sondern als jenseitige
Oberflache." 1 Here the earth is still a flat disk ; but
Hades, instead of being within it, is simply its under or
reverse side.
Third, a class who locate the shadowy realm on the
same plane with the inhabited earth, but in the far West,
just inside the Ocean-stream. This includes all commen
tators who, locating Hades above ground in the West,
place Kirke's isle in the same quarter, and hold that
Odysseus did not cross over the Ocean-stream.
Fourth, a class who locate it in the far West, just out
side the Ocean-stream. This includes all commentators
who, locating Hades above ground in the West, place
Kirke's isle in the same quarter, but hold that Odysseus
crossed the Ocean-stream.2
1 Fleckeisen's Jahrbiicher, 1872, vol. cv., pp. 1-8.
2 Rinck, Die Religion der Hellenen, Th. ii., p. 459 : " Bei Homer
ist das Schattenreich noch keine Unterwelt, sondern jenes liegt aus-
ser dem von der Sonne beschienenen Bereich der Erde, jenseits des
Okeanos." Here, and in some other writers, along with a retention
of the unity of the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, we find an
intimation that the perplexing discrepancy in Greek representations
of Hades is due to a gradual translocation of it from the far West
to the interior of the earth, in consequence of advancing geograph
ical knowledge. Perhaps a separate class should have been intro
duced, consisting of the representatives of this view. But had this
been done, yet a fourteenth class would have been necessary to in
clude those who, with Charles Francis Keary, exactly reverse the
process, and make the oldest Greek Hades interterranean, and the
trans-oceanic one at the West a later product. The Mythology of the
Eddas. London, 1882 : p. 14.
HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD. 469
Fifth, a class who locate it in the far East, just inside
the Ocean-stream. This class includes all who place
Kirke's isle in the East, and hold that Odysseus did not
cross the Ocean-stream in visiting the superterranean
Hades.
Sixth, a class who locate it in the far East, just outside
the Ocean-stream. This includes all who place Kirke's
isle in the East, and hold that Odysseus crossed the Ocean-
stream in visiting the superterranean Hades.
Seventh, a class who try to harmonize the conflicting
representations by making the one set of expressions re
late to a Hades in the bosom of the flat earth, and the
other set of expressions relate to " the entrance " of the
passage leading down to it from the world of living men.
This class is again subdivided into four sub- classes, ac
cording as they maintain a as-oceanic or trans-oceanic loca
tion of this mouth of Hades, and place it to the East or
to the West of the poet.
Eighth, a class who hold that the difficulty is in the
poet himself, he having got two incompatible mythologies
mixed up together.
Ninth, a class who try to solve all discrepancies by as
signing the different representations in the two poems,
and in different parts of the same poem, to different ages
and to different authors.
Tenth, a class who query whether or no it be not ad
missible to hold that Homer had two realms of Hades,
— the one " subterranean," and the other " beyond the
Ocean."
Eleventh, a class who, with Altenburg and Gerland, re
solve the whole story of Odysseus' descent to Hades into
an astronomical myth ; l or with Cox see in it simply a
mythologico-poetic expression for the prosaic fact that
the Sun, the " lord of day," returning after his morn-
1 " Odysseus in der Unterwelt." Archiv fur Philologie, 1840,
pp. 170-188. G. K. C. Gerland, Altgriechische Mdrchen in der Odys-
see. Magdeburg, 1869 : p. 50.
47O APPENDIX.
ing and noontide wanderings to his western home, some
times finds it necessary to make his way behind dark
clouds.1
Twelfth, a class who point out the manifest difficulties
of the problem, but frankly profess their utter inability to
present a solution.
Of the more important of the maps of " the world ac
cording to Homer," those of Bunbury, Volcker, and For-
biger are constructed according to the view of class
fourth ; that of Ukert, according to the view of that di
vision of class seventh who locate the Hades portal in
the far West, just inside the Ocean-stream ; that of Glad
stone,2 according to the view of that division of class
seventh who locate the Hades portal in the far East, just
inside the Ocean-stream. Volcker, however, is inclined
to believe in two Homeric Hades-realms, — the one in-
terterranean, the other at the West superterranean and
trans-oceanic.
Such are the multifarious, contradictory, confused, and
despairing answers given to our question by the most
learned and eminent of Homeric scholars. It would be
an easy task to fill a volume with citations illustrating
these various positions, and the ingenious but mutually
destructive arguments by which their respective advo
cates have sought to establish them. It will be more
profitable to turn from such a Babel of ideas, over which
the darkness of Hades itself seems to have fallen, and
inquire what the poet himself has to say on the subject.
The region of the dead is represented in Homer as
one of perpetual night. Its name is Erebos.8 From the
1 Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. ii., 171-180.
2 Mr. Gladstone has more recently abandoned the flat-earth theory,
and tentatively advocated an interterranean Hades with its mouth
downwards. See his Primer, London and New York, 1878, pp. 54-
57 ; and Homeric Synchronism, London, 1876, p. 231. Perhaps this
view also should have been included in the foregoing classification.
3 " Denomination assyrienne." Felix Robiou, Questions Home1-
HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD. 4/1
name of the divinity presiding in it, it is generally called
the house or abode of Aides (Hades).1 That it was con
ceived of as underneath the earth appears from the per
petually recurring expressions, both in the Iliad and in
the Odyssey, relating the descent into and ascent out
of it.2 In certain passages it is in fact expressly spoken
of as "under the earth ; " 3 in others, as "under the re
cesses of the earth." 4 Hence Aides himself is styled
Zeus Kara;(#6Vio9, " the Subterranean Zeus." 5
In the Battle of the Gods there is a vivid picture of this
underworld and of its trembling king : —
riques. Paris, 1876 : p. 13. The Shemitic origin of this term is sig
nificant. It prepares us to find an agreement between the Homeric
and the Assyrio-Babylonian ideas of the realm of the dead. Mr.
Gladstone says, " Long before ... I had been struck by the pre
dominance of a foreign character and associations in the Homeric
Underworld of the eleventh Odyssey." Homeric Synchronism. Lon
don, 1876: p. 213. On the remarkably expressive cuneiform ideo
graph for eribu, see the explanation given by Robert Brown, Jun., in
the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, May 4, 1880.
1 This term is also believed to be of Oriental origin, exactly corre
sponding to the Bit Edi of the Akkadians. See the translations of
The Descent of Istar. " Talbot regards, and I think justly, the usual
etymology of Hades — quasi Aides, ' invisible ' — as an afterthought."
Robert Brown, Jun., The Myth of KirkZ, p. 1 1 1 n.
2 Iliad, vi. 284; vii. 330; xiv. 457; xxii. 425. Odyssey, x. 174,
560 ; xi. 65, 164, 475, 624 ; xxiii. 252 ; xxiv. 10, etc. " Von einem be-
sondern Eingang zu diesem unterirdischen Hades," remarks V dicker
(Homerische Geographie, p. 141), " meldet der Dichter nichts ; viel-
mehr gehen die Seelen, durch nichts gehindert, begraben und unbe-
graben uberall unter die Erde." Granting this, there is no ground
for his other assertion, " Dieser Hades ist nicht unter, sondern in der
Erde." The immaterial shade can as easily pass through the whole
globe to an opposite surface as through a thick crust to a central
cavern. But see Mr. Gladstone's Homeric Synchronism, p. 222 :
" There is not in all Homer a single passage which imports the idea,
or indicates the possibility, of our passing through the solid earth."
3 Iliad, xxiii. 100 ; xviii. 333.
4 Odyssey, xxiv. 204. Comp. Iliad, xxii. 482.
5 Iliad, ix. 457. Comp. iii. 278; xix. 259 ; xx. 61. Comp. Herod
otus, ii. 122.
4/2 APPENDIX.
Thus the blessed gods inciting, both sides engaged, and
among them made severe contention to break out. But dread
fully from above thundered the Father of gods and men, while
beneath Poseidon shook the boundless earth and the lofty
summits of the mountains. The roots and all the summits
of many-rilled Ida were shaken, and the city of the Trojans
and the ships of the Greeks. A'ides himself, king of the
nether world, trembled beneath, and leaped up from his throne
terrified, and shouted aloud, lest earth-shaking Poseidon should
cleave asunder the earth over him, and disclose to mortals and
immortals his mansions, terrible, squalid, which even the gods
loathe.1
But while the abode of Aides is thus clearly represented
as under the earth, it is nevertheless represented as just
across the Ocean-river, and capable of being reached by
ship. In the eleventh and twelfth books of the Odyssey,
the voyage of Odysseus to this region is described in the
same apparently literal nautical terms as is the voyage to
the Land of the Lotus-Eaters. And of his interview with
the dead, Hayman says, " The whole scene is conceived
by the poet as enacted on a geographical extension of the
earth beyond the Ocean-stream." 2 There is no hint of
any descent into the interior of the earth, no passage
through or into subterranean caverns. The journey is as
natural in all its aspects as any voyage from one coast of
the Atlantic to its opposite.8 Thus opens the eleventh
book : —
1 Iliad, xx. 61 ff. That there may be no question as to the impar
tiality of the translations given in this paper, the well-known and
widely circulated version by Theodore Alois Buckley, of Christ
Church, Oxford, is followed. A version giving more accurately the
force of the verbs expressing upward and downward motion would
in many passages be more favorable to the cosmological view here
presented.
2 Henry Hayman, D. D., The Odyssey of Homer. London, 1866:
vol. ii., Appendix G 3, p. xvii.
8 " Von einem Hinabsteigen findet sich keine Spur. Wer beweisen
kann, Odysseus sei im Innern der Erde gewesen, der versuche es ! "
— Volcker, Homerische Geographic, p. 150.
HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD. 4/3
But when we were come down to the ship and the sea, we
first of all drew the ship into the divine sea, and we placed a
mast and sails in the black ship. And taking the sheep we
put them on board, and we ourselves also embarked grieving,
shedding the warm tear. And fair-haired Kirke (Circe) — an
awful goddess, possessing human speech — sent behind our
dark-blue-prowed ship a moist wind that filled the sails, an ex
cellent companion. And we sat down, making use of each of
the instruments in the ship, and the wind and the pilot directed
it. And the sails of it passing over the sea were stretched
out the whole day ; and the sun set, and all the ways were
overshadowed. And it reached the extreme boundaries of the
deep-flowing Ocean,1 where are the people and city of the
Kimmerians covered with shadow and vapor, nor does the
shining sun behold them with his beams, neither when he goes
toward the starry heaven, nor when he turns back again
from heaven to earth, but pernicious night is spread over hap
less mortals. Having come there we drew up our ship, and
we took out the sheep, and we ourselves went again to the
stream of the Ocean, until we came to the place which Kirke
mentioned.
Here the hero performed the rites and held the consul
tation which Kirke had previously prescribed in these
terms : —
" O noble son of Laertes, much-contriving Odysseus, do not
remain any longer in my house against your will. But first
you must perform another voyage, and come to the house of
A'ides and awful Persephone, to consult the soul of Theban
Tiresias, a blind prophet, whose mind is firm. To him, even
when dead, Persephone has given understanding, alone to be
prudent, but the rest flit about as shades."
" Who, O Kirke, will conduct me on this voyage ? No one
has yet come to Aides in a black ship."
" O noble son of Laertes, much-contriving Odysseus, let not
the desire of a guide for thy ship be at all a care to thee ; but
having erected the mast, and spread out the white sails, sit
down, and let the blast of the North wind carry it. But when
thou shalt have passed through the Ocean in thy ship, where
i That is, the farther shore. See Volcker, p. 145.
474 APPENDIX.
is the easy-dug 1 shore and the groves of Persephone, and tall
poplars, and fruit-destroying willows, there draw up thy ship
in the deep-eddying Ocean, and do thou thyself go to the spa
cious house of Ai'des. Here indeed both Pyriphlegethon and
Cocytus, which is a stream from the water of Styx, flow into
Acheron ; and there is a rock, and the meeting of two loud-
sounding rivers. There then, O hero, approaching near as I
command thee, dig a trench the width of a cubit each way;
and pour around it libations to all the dead, first with mixed
honey, then with sweet wine, and again the third time with
water, and sprinkle white meal over it. And entreat much the
powerless heads of the dead, promising that when thou comest
to Ithaca thou wilt offer up in thy palace a barren heifer, which
soever is the best, and wilt fill the pyre with excellent things,
and that thou wilt sacrifice to Tiresias alone a black sheep, all
black, which excels among thy sheep. But when thou shalt
have entreated the illustrious nations of the dead with prayers,
then sacrifice a male sheep and a black female, turning to
ward Erebos ; and do thou thyself be turned away at a dis
tance, going toward the streams of the river ; but there many
souls of those gone dead will come. Then immediately exhort
thy companions and command them, having skinned the sheep
which lie there slain with the unpitying brass, to burn them
and to invoke the gods, both mighty Aides and dread Per
sephone. And do thou, having drawn thy sharp sword from
thy thigh, sit down, nor suffer the powerless heads of the
dead to go near the blood before thou inquirest of Tiresias.
Then the prophet will immediately come to thee, O leader
of the people, who will tell to thee the voyage and the meas
ures of the way and thy return, how thou mayest go over the
fishy sea." 2
In the following passage Odysseus narrates how, hav
ing arrived " at the place which Kirke mentioned," he
fulfilled her commission : —
1 Buckley well expresses dissatisfaction with this rendering.
Volcker translates the term " ein niedriges Gestade." It is per
haps the low-down shore as contrasted with the upper or opposite
one.
2 Odyssey, x. 488-540.
HOMERS ABODE OF THE DEAD. 475
Then Perimedes and Eurylochos made sacred offerings ;
but I, drawing my sharp sword from my thigh, dug a trench
the width of a cubit each way, and around it we poured liba
tions to all the dead, first with mixed honey, then with sweet
wine, again a third time with water, and I sprinkled white meal
over it. And I much besought the unsubstantial heads of the
dead, promising that when I came to Ithaca I would offer up
in my palace a barren heifer, whichsoever is the best, and that
I would sacrifice separately to Tiresias alone a sheep all black,
which excels among our sheep. But when I had besought
them, the nations of the dead, with vows and prayers, then
taking the sheep, I cut off their heads into the trench, and the
black blood flowed ; and the souls of the perished dead were
assembled forth from Erebos, — betrothed girls and youths, and
much-enduring old men, and tender virgins having a newly
grieved mind, and many Mars-renowned men wounded with
brass-tipped spears, possessing gore-besmeared arms, who in
great numbers were wandering about the trench on different
sides with a divine clamor; and pale fear seized upon me.
Then at length exhorting my companions, I commanded them,
having skinned the sheep which lay there, slain with the cruel
brass, to burn them, and to invoke the gods, both A'ides
and Persephone. But I, having drawn my sharp sword from
my thigh, sat down ; nor did I suffer the powerless heads
of the dead to draw nigh the blood, before I inquired of
Tiresias.
So far it might appear uncertain whether the hero were
really in Hades, or only near it, at some point accessible
alike to the living and to the dead. But the lines imme
diately following show that he was truly in " the house of
Aides : " —
And first the soul of my companion Elpenor came, for he
was not yet buried beneath the wide-wayed earth ; for we left
his body in the palace of Kirke, unwept-for and unburied,
since another toil then urged us. Beholding him I wept, and
pitied him in my mind ; and, addressing him, spoke winged
words : " O Elpenor, how didst thou come under the dark
west ? Thou hast come sooner on foot than I with a black
ship."
4/6 APPENDIX.
Thus I spoke, but he groaning answered me in discourse :
" O Zeus-born son of Laertes, much-contriving Odysseus, the
evil destiny of the deity and the abundant wine hurt me. Ly
ing down in the palace of Kirke, I did not think to go down
backward, having come to the long ladder ; but I fell down
ward from the roof, and my neck was broken from the verte
brae, and my soul descended to Hades."
In line 69, Elpenor speaks of Odysseus " going hence
from the house of Aides / " and in line 164, as elsewhere
(x. 502; xi. 59, 158; xii. 21; xxiii. 324), the expres
sions leave no chance to doubt that Odysseus' voyage
was a genuine descensus ad inferos?-
Here, then, are the two grand tests of every proposed
solution of the problem of the location of the Homeric
Hades : —
I. Its Hades must be underneath the earth ; and
II. // must be on the surface of the earth, beyond the
Ocean.
This strange and perplexing difference, not to say con
tradiction, in the Homeric representations, did not escape
the notice of the older commentators and writers on
mythology. Especially has it called out the ingenuity
of German scholars. F. A. Wolf recognized it, but did
not profess to be able to give an explanation. J. H. Voss
invented the method of solving the problem by placing
Hades itself within the bosom of the earth-disk, but its
"entrance" on the westernmost point of Europe on the
inner shore of the ocean. Volcker rejected this solution,
but, in the absence of a better, cautiously suggested — as
we have seen — the possibility of Homer's having held to
two kingdoms of the dead, one within the earth, and one
1 See Preller, Mythologie, vol. i., pp. 504, 505, where he says that
the region visited was "die ganze und wirkliche Unterwelt, nicht
etwa bloss ein Eingang in die Unterwelt." See also Volcker, Ho
mer ische Geographic, § 76.
HOMERS ABODE OF THE DEAD. 477
in the dark trans-oceanic West.1 Eggers 2 and Nitzsch *
inclined to the support of the Vossian compromise ; and
in 1854 Preller could still speak of it as the one "at
present chiefly prevalent." 4 Still, as Preller and others
urged, nothing in the descriptions of the western Hades
corresponds with the idea of a " portal " or " entrance "
to a subterranean world extending so far eastward as to
be situated under Greece and Asia Minor : 5 hence the
latest interpreters have been as free as were the earlier
to take their choice among the wild and contradictory
conjectures classified at the beginning of this paper. The
latest of these guesses is that of Jordan ; and, though it
comes within a hair's-breadth of the truth, it has been the
most ridiculed of all.6
As pointed out in earlier pages, the one false principle
which has vitiated and confused all modern discussions
of Homeric cosmology is the groundless notion that the
earth of Homer is a flat disk. This mistaken presup
position is responsible for the failure of all hitherto at
tempted demonstrations of the true location of the poet's
Hades. Once conceive of the Homeric Cosmos as rep-
1 This, if allowed, would afford no relief; for, as Hentze says,
" the subterranean character of even the Odyssean Hades can by no
means be got rid of." Ameis, Anhang., Book X., 508.
2 De Oreo Homerico, Altona, 1836. But Eggers located the Hades
entrance inside the Ocean-stream, Nitzsch outside.
3 G. W. Nitzsch, Erkldrende Anmerkungen zu Homers Odyssee.
Hannover, 1840 : Bd. III., p. xxxv., 187.
4 Griechische Mythologie, L, p. 505.
6 See Preller : Mythologie, vol. i., p. 504. Eisenlohr, Lage des
Homerischen Todtenreichs , 1872. Bunbury contents himself with the
cool remark, " It is certainly not worth while to inquire what geo
graphical idea the poet formed in his own mind of this visit to the
regions of Hades." (!) History of Ancient Geography, vol. i., p. 58.
6 See Kammer, Einheit der Odyssee nach Widerlegung der An-
sichten von Lachmann-Steinthal, Kochly, Hennings, und Kirchhojf.
Leipsic, 1873 : pp. 486-490.
478 APPENDIX.
resented in the accompanying cut of the "World of
Homer," and the problem of the site of Hades is solved
at a glance. It is the southern or under hemisphere of
the upright spherical earth. In this conception, whatso
ever is " trans-oceanic " is also and of necessity " subter
ranean." Now for the first time can it be understood
how Leda and her noble-minded sons can be " on a geo
graphical extension of the earth " on the farther shore of
the Ocean, and at the same time i/e/a^ev y>}s (Od., xi.
298). In this Cosmos, Hades cannot be beyond the
Ocean without being also underneath the earth. On the
traditional theory of a flat earth, the passage is and
ever must be the palpable inconsistency which Volcker
represents it. Even the theory of two or of twenty
Homers does not reasonably explain it. Precisely so
with the passages relating to Elpenor. His soul at death
goes Kara x$ovo5, yet it is found with the other ghosts in
the shadowy land just across the Ocean-river. So again
with the passages relating to the shades of the slain Suit
ors. These reach the Underworld (xxiv. 106, 203) ;
but it is by a route along the surface of the ground to the
Ocean-stream, in full sight of the gates of the sun and of
the stars of the Milky Way (xxiv. 9-1 2 ).1 Illustrious
scholars have accused the poet of Widerspriiche grb'ber
und arger than usual in this account ; 2 but the whole
trouble has been, not in the poet, but in the poet's inter
preters. With the spherical earth, all is consistent and
precisely as it should be. In this reconstructed Homeric
Cosmos, every crosser of the Ocean-stream, whether it be
Hermes, or Odysseus, or Herakles, reaches the groves of
Persephone and the house of Aides. Wherever Kirke's
isle is located, the " blast of the North wind " will drive
the voyager thence towards the realms of the dead. In
like manner it can now be understood how the stolen
1 Porphyrius, De antro Nympharum, 28, explains that stumbling-
block of commentators, " the people of dreams."
2 Volcker, Homerische Geographic, p. 152.
HOMERS ABODE OF THE DEAD.
479
bride of Subterranean Zeus, while descending behind
swift steeds to the Underworld, can yet for a considerable
time behold the starry heaven, the earth, the sunlight,
OLYMPOS.
TARTAROSo
The World of Homer.
For a convenient account of this reestablished world-view of the
ancients, for the use of schools, see The True Key to Ancient Cosmol*
ogy and Mythical Geography (third edition, illustrated, Boston, MeSSTS«
Ginn, Heath and Co., 1882), from which the cut is taken.
480 APPENDIX.
and the fishy sea.1 Though the god has power to pene
trate the solid sphere,2 it is down no yawning chasm that
his chariot disappears. As far as we can trace him and
his victim, they are still at the surface, simply moving
from the upper to the lower hemisphere.8 In perfect
accordance with the requirement formulated by Volcker,
Odysseus and his companions descend (xi. 57, 476),
while the ghosts ascend (xi. 38), to reach the meeting-
place on the lower edge of the Ocean-stream. Beautifully
exact and strikingly natural is now the poet's declaration
that Tartaros is "as far below Hades as earth from
heaven," — a declaration as fatal to many of the fifteen or
more traditional explanations of Homer's Hades as it is
to Flach's elaborate and ingenious diagram of the Hades
of Hesiod.4 With this inverted hemisphere for the king
dom of the dead, Voss need not longer trouble himself
about the mention of " clouds" therein.5 In fine, with
the correct Homeric conception of the earth and of
Hades, the manifold alleged contradictions of the poet
instantaneously vanish. Better than that, the dual im-
1 Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 30-35. Foerster places the origin of
this hymn early in the seventh century before Christ : Der Raub nnd
Riickkehr der Persephont. Stuttgart, 1874 : pp. 33~39- See Sterrett,
Qua in Re Hymni Home rid quinque Majores inter se different Anti-
quitate vel Homeritate, Boston, 1881.
2 Lines 16-18. Precisely so in the Indian epic, the Ramayana : one
and the same point in Hades is reached, whether we accompany
Ansuman digging through the heart of the earth, or follow the god
dess Ganga along the surface of the earth and across the Ocean-
bed. Book I., canto xl. Compare Odyssey, xi. 57,58.
3 The much-debated Nysian field whence the goddess was stolen
was in the land of the gods at the North Pole. Menzel, Die vor-
christliche Unsterblichkeitslehre^ Bd. i., 64-67 ; ii., 25, 87, 93, ICO,
122, 148, 345.
4 Das System der Hesiodischen Kosmogonie, Leipsic, 1874.
5 Odyssey, xi. 591. Volcker, while locating this Hades above
ground far to the West, is also embarrassed with these clouds, since
his Homeric heaven does not extend over the trans-oceanic region, or
even over the Ocean : p. 151.
HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD. 481
ages of Hades, which have so long perplexed and blurred
the vision of Homeric interpreters, suddenly resolve
themselves into one perfectly focused stereoscopic pic
ture of startling vividness and beauty.
One ground of misgiving and doubt may possibly still
occur to cautious minds. "Is it credible," it may be
asked, " that the early Homeric Greek, unschooled in the
exercise of the scientific imagination, could picture to
himself that pendant under-surface of the earth as habit
able even by ghosts? Could he so long before 'Newton's
day ' have gained such knowledge of gravitation as to see
how infernal rivers and infernal palaces could cling to an
under-hemisphere ? That Aristotle and the Greek philos
ophers of his age were able, we know from their writ
ings ; 1 but is it credible that the Greek of the Homeric
age was equal to such a task ? This proposed conception
of Hades requires that we should think of a world where
everything is upside down, exactly contrary and antip
odal to our own. Can we believe that ' prehistoric men '
could achieve such a prodigy of abstract thought ? "
A pertinent and perhaps sufficient answer to these
questions might be given by pointing to a most curious
and instructive funeral-custom among the modern Karens
of Burmah. This tribe is certainly not more highly
gifted or more highly civilized than were the Greeks of
the heroic age, yet they have precisely this Homeric con
ception of an antipodal Hades. A most competent author
ity gives us the following account : " When the day of
burial arrives, and the body is carried to the grave, four
bamboo splints are taken, and one is thrown towards the
West, saying, 'That is the East;' another is thrown to
the East, saying, ' That is the West ; ' a third is thrown up
wards towards the top of the tree, saying, 'That is the foot
of the tree ; ' and a fourth is thrown downwards, saying,
1 See Dr. H. W. Schafer, Entwickelung der Ansichten des Alter-
thums tiber die Gestalt und Grosse der Erde, Leipsic, 1868, quarto.
31
482 APPENDIX.
' That is the top of the tree.' The sources of the stream
are pointed to, saying, 'That is the mouth of the stream ; '
and the mouth of the stream is pointed to, saying, ' That
is the head of the stream.' This is done because in Hades
everything is upside down in relation to the things of this
world." *
Striking, however, as would be this answer to the ques
tioner, a better can be given. The better one points out
to him the foolishness of the assumption that either the
Greeks or the Karens originated for themselves their con
ceptions of Hades. Both simply inherited from their
fathers the old pre-Hellenic Asiatic idea of an antipodal
Underworld. Ages ago the notion which underlies the
Karen's rites was so prominent in the mind of the East
Aryans that the sudden and inevitable reversal of the
points of the compass, consequent upon entering the Un
derworld, became a poetic circumlocution to express the
idea of dying : thus, " Before thou art carried away dead
to the Ender by the royal command of Yama, . . . before
the four quarters of the sky whirl round, . . . practice the
most perfect contemplation." 2 Ages ago the notion
which underlies the southward voyage of Odysseus led
prehistoric Akkadians, in naming the cardinal points of
the compass, to designate the South as " the funereal
point;" and in locating the kingdom of the dead, to place
1 Mason in Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, XXXV., Ft. ii.,
p. 28. Spencer, Descriptive Sociology, No. 5, p. 23. At least one tribe
of our American Indians at the time of their discovery had a myth
of creation in which the earth was conceived of as a ball. H. H.
Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. iii., p. 536. That the
same idea underlay the Hades-conception of the New Zealanders is
plain from various indications. See present work, note on pp. 125,
126.
'2 Mahabharata, xii. 12,080. Muir, Metrical Translations from
Sanskrit Writers, London, 1879, p. 220. " To the gods this sphere
of asterisms revolves toward the right ; to the enemies of the gods,
toward the left." S&rya Siddh&nta, xii., ch. 55. Comp. Aristotle,
De Casio, lib. ii., c. 2.
HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD. 483
it opposite the stars of the south polar sky} Through all
the lifetime of Babylonia and Assyria, as through all the
lifetime of ancient India,2 the mount of the gods was at
the summit of the earth at the North Pole ; its counter
part — the mount of the rulers of the dead — exactly op
posite, beneath the earth, and at the South Pole.3 Hence
life and light proceeded from the North, darkness and
death from the South.4 In like manner the Egyptians
had their heaven-touching mountain in the farthest North,
1 Dupuis, Origine de Tous les Cults, torn, i., 624. Lenormant,
Chaldcean Magic (English edition), pp. 168, 169. On the significance
of the South in Hindu belief, see Colebrooke, Essays, \o\. i., pp. 174,
176, 182, 187, vol. ii., pp. 390-392 j Monier Williams, Sanskrit Dic
tionary, Art. " Yama;" Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. v., pp. 284-327;
and India literature passim.
2 Surya Siddhanta, ch. xii. Journal of the American Oriental Soci
ety, New Haven, 1860, vol. vi., pp. 140-480. Keightley, Mythology
(Bohn), p. 240, n. 9.
3 Of the latter mount, Lenormant correctly says that, in ancient
Chaldaean thought, it is " situee dans les parties basses de la terre"
but at times he incorrectly locates it in the West. In like manner
the mountain of the gods — " le point culminant de la convexite de la
surface de la terre" — he places not in the North (Is. xiv. 14), but
often in the East or North-east. Origines de V Histoire, Paris, 1882,
torn. ii. i, p. 134. See also Tiele, Histoire Comparee des Anciennes
Religions, Paris, 1882, p. 177, where he speaks of the entrance to
Hades as at the South-west. This is certainly a mistake, for the
Akkadian expression mer kurra, " the cardinal point of THE MOUN
TAIN," must, at least originally, have signified the North. And as to
Lenormant's location of the antipodal mountain of Hades in the
West or South-west, our latest German writer upon the subject, Dr.
Friedrich Delitzsch, an eminent Assyriologist, affirms that in the
cuneiform literature thus far known he has discovered no trace of such
a location. Wo lag das Paradies? Leipsic, i88i,p. 121.
4 " Nach der pythagoraischen, orphischen und neuplatonischen
Lehre brachte der Nordwind Leben der Siidwind Tod, wohnten hin-
ter dem Nordwind die Seligen und die Gotter als Schopfer und Er-
halter der Welt, hinter dem Siidwind aber die Verdammten und alle
bosen zerstorenden Urmachte." W. Menzel, Die vorchristliche Un-
sterblichkeitslehre, vol. ii., p. 101 ; also pp. 36, 168, 345, and passim.
Compare A. Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grhe Antique, Paris,
1869, torn. iii. 354.
484 APPENDIX.
and an antipodal counterpart in Amend, or the abode of
the dead.1 As in ancient India's, so in ancient Egypt's,
thought, this world of the dead was exactly the reverse or
counterpart of the world of the living.2 " The tall hill of
Hades," like Ku-meru, is therefore a "pendent" one,8 —
the southern or under terminus of the egg of the earth.4
1 For the first, see Brugsch, Geographische Inschriften altdgyp-
tischer Denkmdler, Leipsic, 1858, Bd. ii., p. 57 ; for the second, The
Book of the Dead, passim.
2 See Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion (English edition, 1882),
p. 68, " the reversed world ; " and the still more forcible expression
in his Histoire Comparee (Paris, 1882), p. 47, " le monde oppose au
monde actuel" Compare Book of the Dead (Birch's version), where
it is styled " the inverted precinct ; " and Thompson's Egyptian Doc
trine of the Future State, wherein Hades is described as " the inverted
hemisphere of darkness," and where it is said to be " evident that the
leading features of the Greek Hades were borrowed from Egypt."
Bibliotheca Sacra, 1 868, pp. 84, 86. Still more recently Reginald S.
Poole has remarked, " Now that we recognize the Vedic source of a
part of the Greek pantheon, and its generally Aryan character, we
may fairly look elsewhere for that which is not Vedic. If embalming
were derived from Egypt, why not the ideas which the Greek saw
surrounding the custom, — the pictures of the Underworld, with its
judgment, its felicity, and its misery ? The stories which Homer
makes Odysseus tell, when he would disguise his identity, show the
familiarity with Egypt of the Greeks of the poet's time." The Con
temporary Review, London, 1881, July, p. 61. It would be better to
say that Homer's Hades, while agreeing with the Egyptian and Baby
lonian and Vedic, was not necessarily "borrowed" from either of
these peoples, but more likely agreed with the Egyptian, Babylonian,
and Vedic, simply because in each case there was a common inherit
ance, — a survival of still more ancient ideas of prehistoric ances
tors.
8 Records of the Past, vol. x., p. 88.
4 Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 67 : " The heaven (at
night) rests upon the earth, like a goose brooding over her egg."
Chabas, Lieblein, and Lefevre have each maintained that the ancient
Egyptians were acquainted with the spherical figure of the earth ;
while Maspero, despite his language in Les Conies Poptilaires de
P£gypte Ancienne (Paris, 1882, pp. Ixi.-lxiii.), in a private letter of
still more recent date admits the possibility that the Egyptians held
to such a view as long ago as eighteen centuries before the Christian
era. In this connection it may be useful to state that Professor
HOMER'S ABODE OF THE DEAD. 485
The assertion sometimes made, that the Egyptian Amenti
was just over the hill to the west of Abydos,1 is only
worthy of such cosmologists as Popsey Middleton, or the
still more illustrious author of the " Zetetic Astronomy."
About a thousand years before Abraham went down
into Egypt, — at least, that is the date assigned by Egyp
tologists, — a scribe engrossed upon a papyrus a fair copy
of a tale of shipwreck. It is now one of the treasures
of St. Petersburg. At the Congress of Orientalists, held
in Berlin in the year 1881, its existence was first made
known to the modern world through the translation then
submitted by M. GolenischefL The tale proves to be a
kind of anticipation of the voyage of Odysseus to the
realm of Aides. As in the Odyssey, it is the ship-com
mander himself who narrates his adventures. There is
no imaginative and poetic vagueness about the details.
The ship was one hundred and fifty cubits long, forty
broad. The crew consisted of one hundred and fifty men.
Upon the Ocean he is wrecked, his crew lost ; he himself,
however, is driven upon an island in the neighborhood
of the nether world of the dead. Indeed, the place itself
was called " The Isle of the Double ; " and it was, as
Maspero believes, peopled by Shades invisible to the
voyager only because he was as yet in the body. The
king of the island was a huge serpent, thirty cubits long,
and possessed of a wonderful beard.2
Tiele informs the present writer that he has abandoned his conjec
ture touching Cher-nuter, expressed in his Vergelijkende Geschiedenis
van de Egyptische en Mesopotamische Godesdiensten, Amsterdam, 1872,
p. 94; French edition, 1882, p. 51 ; English edition, 1882, p. 72.
1 As, for example, by Marius Fontane, Histoire Universelle, Les
Egyptes, Paris, 1882, p. 154. The following is particularly timely :
" While at Abydos I explored the mountain cliffs to the westward in
the hope of finding early tombs in them. In this, however, I was dis
appointed, as I came across only a few tombs of the Roman period."
Professor A. H. Sayce in letter from Egypt in The Academy, London,
Feb. 2, 1884, p. 84.
z Les Contes Populaires de r£gypte Ancienne, pp. 145-147. On the
486 APPENDIX.
In what direction lay this mysterious land ?
Not in the West, where all our Egyptologists persist in
locating Amend, but in the South. Directly up the Nile,
and out into the Ocean at its head-waters, lay the voya
ger's track. As in the case of Odysseus, so many centu
ries later, it was the blast of the North wind which bore
him thither.1
In conclusion, if both the ancient Egyptians 2 and Chal-
dasans 3 believed that like as the stars of the northern
hemisphere are set over the realm of the living, so the
stars of the southern hemisphere are set over the realm of the
dead ; if in ancient Hindu thought " the gods in heaven
are beheld by the inhabitants of hell as they move with
their heads inverted; " 4 if in Roman thought —
conflicting views of Egyptologists as to the interpretation of terms
designating the points of the compass, see Zeitschrift fur dgyptische
Sprache, 1865, 1877, etc.
1 The universality of the ancient belief that disembodied souls must
cross a body of water to reach their proper abode has attracted the
attention of Mannhardt, and led him to remark, " Da auch die kel-
tische, hellenische, iranische und indische Religion diese Vorstellung
kennt, so ist es von vorn herein wahrscheinlich, dass dieselbe liber
die Zeit der Trennung hinausgeht." Germanische Mythen, Berlin,
1858, p. 364. This is a far more reasonable explanation than the
fanciful attempt of Keary in the work already cited, and in his paper
before the Royal Society of Literature entitled Earthly Paradise of
European Myths.
2 Creuzer-Guigniaut, Religions de P Antiquite, torn, ii., p. 836. Comp.
the language of the recently discovered epitaph of Queen Isis em
Kheb, mother-in law of Shishak, King of Assyria (circa 1000 B.C.) :
" She is seated all beautiful in her place enthroned, among the gods
of the South she is crowned with flowers." The Ftmeral Tent of an
Egyptian Queen, by Villiers Stuart, London, 1882, p. 34. Notwith
standing this, Mr. Stuart, a few pages later, — so powerful is the in
fluence of tradition, — alludes to Amenti as located in the West (p.
49, also p. 27). But the inscription continues : " She is seated in her
beauty in the arms of Khonsou her father, fulfilling his desires. He
is in Amenti, the place of departed spirits." Comp. p. 33.
3 Diodorus Siculus, ii. 31, 4. Lenormant, The Beginnings of His-
tory, New York, 1882, pp. 568, 569.
4 Garrett, Classical Dictionary of India, Art. " Naraka." See also
Obry, Le Berceau de FEspece humaine, p. 184 n.
LATEST POLAR RESEARCH. 487
" Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces
Consurgit premitur Libyas devexus in austros :
Hie vertex semper sublimis, at ilium
Sub pedibus Styx atra videt. Manes que profundi ; " *
if in Greek cosmology the tall Pillar of Atlas is, as Eu
ripides makes it, simply the upright axis of earth and
heaven,2 — then the earth of the ancients is incontestably
A SPHERE, and Hades its under-surface. The " flat disk "
notion is itself a myth, and a myth without foundation.
In ancient thought, in a sense unrecognized even by the
writer of the words, was it true, —
" The world of Life,
The world of Death, are but opposing sides
Of one great Orb." 8
SECTION VII. — LATEST POLAR RESEARCH.
THE recent happy issue of the last of the three re
lief-expeditions sent out by the United States government
for the rescue of Lieutenant Greely and his starving
band of heroes has given unusual popular interest to the
great international undertaking in which he and his men
were so perilously engaged. Still very few, compara
tively speaking, understand the scope and promise of this
first really adequate and hopeful scheme for the investi
gation of Terrestrial Physics near the Pole. Mr. O. B.
Cole, in 1883, described its inception and purpose as fol
lows : —
The representatives of ten nations besides our own are en
gaged in it ; the fields of observation are in both the Arctic
1 Vergil, Georgics, i. 240, ss.
2 Peirithous, 597, 3-5, ed. Nauck. Comp. Aristotle, De Anim.
Motione, c. 3. Samuel Beal, Four Lectures on Buddhist Literature in
China. London, 1882 : p. 147. Liiken on Atlas in Traditionen des
Menschengeschlechtes. Minister, second edition, 1869. Also The True
fCey to Ancient Cosmology, j>p. 13-21.
3 Morris, The Epic of Hades (fourteenth edition). London, 1882.*
p. 230.
488 APPENDIX.
and Antarctic, as well as the intermediate regions of the
globe ; there have been established eighteen Polar stations,
and upwards of forty auxiliary stations ; the observations have
been made during the year which will end with the present
month — that is, between September i, 1882, and September i,
1883 ; they have been made and recorded daily, and bear upon
the same identical points of inquiry. This scheme of obser
vation originated with Lieutenant Charles Weyprecht, an Aus
trian explorer of fame, who, however, did not live to see it
carried into execution. He first broached it at a meeting of
German naturalists and physicists held at Gratz on Septem
ber 1 8, 1875. The plan was formally approved at a meeting
of the International Meteorological Congress held in Rome
in the spring of 1879. and its details were perfected at other
meetings of the same body held in Hamburg, October i, 1879,
and at Berne, August 7, 1880. Finally, on August i, 1881, ten
delegates, of whom General Hazen, chief of the United States
Signal Service, was one, met at St. Petersburg and organized
an official Polar Commission. All the members of this com
mission had authority to act for their respective governments.
The Polar stations were assigned among the nations as fol
lows : The United States, at Lady Franklin Bay, Grinnell
Land, and Point Barrow, Alaska ; Great Britain and Canada,
at Fort McRae and Fort Resolution, on the Great Slave Lake,
in British America ; Denmark, at Godthaab and Upernavik,
on the west coast of Greenland ; Germany, at Hogarth Inlet,
Cumberland Sound ; Austria, at Young Foreland, Jan Mayen
Island, north of Iceland ; Finland, at Soudan Kyla, in Lap
land ; Holland, at Dickerson Haven, mouth of the Yenisee
River, in Russia ; Norway, at Bossekop, northwestern coast
of Norway ; Sweden, at Mosel Bay, Spitzbergen ; and Russia,
at Moller Bay, Nova Zembla, and Lighthouse Point, at the
mouth of the Lena River. The Antarctic stations are those
of Germany, on the South Georgia Islands ; France, at Cape
Horn ; Italy, at Punta Arenas, in Patagonia ; and the Argen
tine Republic, at Cordoba. The Polar stations are all within
thirty degrees of the North or the South Pole, and the auxil
iary stations are spread over the rest of the habitable globe.
In his original presentation of the scheme Lieutenant Wey
precht remarked that the unsatisfactory scientific results of
the various Arctic and Antarctic expeditions are owing mainly
to two causes : first, that the primary object of these expedi-
LATEST POLAR RESEARCH. 489
tions has been geographical discovery, while scientific investi
gation was secondary; and, secondly, that these individual
voyages have been of an isolated character, and hence the ob
servations made are necessarily deficient as compared with
what would be gained by a properly scientific investigation,
which should obtain, for combination and comparison, memo
randa of magnetic and meteorological observations simultane
ously made in all parts of the world under a uniform system.
Such an investigation, he said, would be feasible only by the
united action of the great nations of the world.
By the plan adopted, the following schedule of work was
agreed upon for each of the several stations : Meteorological
observations : temperature of the air, temperature of the sea,
barometric pressure, humidity, direction and force of wind,
kind, amount, and motion of the clouds, rainfall, and weather
and optical phenomena. Magnetic observations : absolute de
clination, absolute inclination, absolute horizontal intensity,
variations of declination and inclination, and variations of hor
izontal intensity. All these observations were considered ob
ligatory, and were to be made at each station hourly each day,
excepting on the 1st and I5th of each month, when the read
ings were to be made every five minutes. The following obser
vations were considered desirable, and doubtless have gener
ally been made : Variations of temperature, with height, solar
radiation, evaporation, galvanic earth currents, parallax of the
aurora, spectroscopic observations on the aurora, ocean cur
rents, tidal observations, structure of ice, density of sea-water,
atmospheric electricity, and the force of gravity. The several
expeditions were started in season to arrive at their respec
tive stations by the date assigned for beginning, September i,
1882. . . .
The station of the party of Lieutenant Greely at Lady
Franklin Bay is the most northerly one of the whole, and is
but about eight degrees south of the Pole. It is very difficult
of access on account of the masses of ice that collect in Baf
fin's Bay. It was arrived at in a vessel by Lieutenant Greely,
though the start was made a year in advance of most of the
other expeditions, under an apprehension that the vessel might
be stopped by ice, and a long journey have to be made over
land. The consequence is that the observations of this party
began in the fall of 1881. It was the intention, however, to
remain two years, and various stores were laid in and arrange-
49O APPENDIX.
merits were made accordingly. Early in the summer of 1882
a steamer was sent by the government with supplies for the
party, but was unable to reach them because of the ice. The
supplies were left at points designated beforehand by Lieuten
ant Greely, whence he could convey them to headquarters by
sledges. Another party was started this summer, and if they
cannot reach him by navigation will employ sledges and push
north till they meet him. He has instructions to retreat this
season by sledge in the contingency of the non-arrival of a
vessel, and to come down the coast of Grinnell Land. Either
by vessel or on these coast-line sledge journeys the two par
ties will undoubtedly meet, and probably something definite
will be heard from them by the end of September.1 . . .
Point Barrow is on the northern or Arctic Ocean shore of
Alaska, in latitude 72° north. The party stationed here is in
charge of Lieutenant P. H. Ray. A relief vessel visited the
place in the summer of 1882, and found all well. The obser
vers reported that the preceding winter had been long and
severe, but not exceeding in these respects what had been ex
pected. Hourly meteorological observations had been kept up
uninterruptedly from October 17, 1881, and magnetic observa
tions from December i. From that date to August i, 1882, over
90,000 readings of the magnetic instruments were taken, and a
corresponding amount of meteorological work had been done.2
Last summer, just before the world had learned of
the rescue of Lieutenant Greely, the commanders of all
the different stations, Greely alone excepted, held a con
ference in Vienna, and congratulated each other and the
scientific world upon the success achieved. The recov
ery of the extremely valuable observations of the then
missing officer has now crowned and completed the
1 Soon after the above was written came the disastrous news of
the destruction and failure of the second relief expedition.
2 Summary of a paper read before the Boston Scientific Society
(from the Boston Daily Advertiser}. See also A. Bellot, " Observa-
toires Scientifiques Circumpolaires," in Bulletin de la Scciete de Geo-
graphie, Paris, I Trimestre, 1883, and the current scientific period
icals. The last-cited article has a valuable map of the international
system of stations. For an imaginary discovery of the North Pole,
see Thos. W. Knox, Voyage of the Vivian. New York, 1884.
LATEST POLAR RESEARCH. 491
grandest and most beneficent enterprise in which the
Christian nations have for centuries, if indeed ever, en
gaged. Most remarkable, perhaps, of all is the fact that
in these several expeditions more than five hundred men,
of various nationalities, were kept more than a full year
within the Arctic Circle, transported thither and returned,
and yet, but for a single mistake in provisioning one of
the parties, not one life would have been sacrificed.
What could be fuller of promise with respect to the future
of polar exploration ?
It is to be feared that stratigraphic and paleonto-
logic questions have had too little consideration on the
part of the scientific commissions which have planned
the latest (as well as the earlier) Arctic expeditions.
Whoever has read the fascinating pages of Heer's "Flora
Fossilis Arctica," and Count Saporta's " Monde des
Plantes avant 1'Apparition de PHomme " (see his chart
opposite p. 128), and Baron Nordenskjold's exceedingly
interesting researches and studies in Spitzbergen, cannot
well avoid the conviction that the pick and shovel and
hammer, intelligently applied anywhere within the Arctic
Circle, are almost certain to give us facts of inestimable
value both to natural science and to archaeology.
The world hath lately made such comet-like
A dvance on Science, we may almost hope,
Before we die of sheer decay, to learn
Something- about our infancy. . . .
A //HERE
Thou seest hath holden fellowship with gods ;
These rocks retain
Their caverned footsteps printed in pure fire.
Those were the times, the ancient youth of Earth,
The elemental years, when Earth and Heaven
Were one in holy bridals, — royal gods
Their bright immortal issue ; when men's minds
Were vast as continents, and not as now
Minute and indistinguishable plots
With here and there acres of untilled brains ', when lived
The great original, broad-eyed, Sunken Race
Whose wisdom, like these sea-sustaining rocks,
Hath formed the base of the world's fluctuous lore.
PHILIP JAMES BAILKY,
492 APPENDIX,
SECTION VIII. — THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF EARLY
TRADITION.
" Is memory capable of preserving through successive
generations the facts of history, or whatever else peoples
are continuously interested in knowing ? At first one is
apt to say ' No,' remembering how seldom two people can
agree in their recollection of even the briefest saying or
commonest occurrence. But look into the matter. Note
how the power of memory differs in different people, and
how it may be cultivated, and especially how it strength
ens when systematically depended on, while, when little
is left to it, it weakens. It is a small fact, but not with
out significance, that among the first things which chil
dren are set to fix in their memories, apart from any idea
of sacredness, are long series of historical names, dates,
and events, — English kings, American colonists and
presidents, — far exceeding in difficulty those Israelitish
histories which Kuenen thinks cannot be trusted because
only preserved by memory. This shows that it is less a
question of the power of memory than of how far memory
is looked on as sacred, and guarded so as to hand on its
contents unimpaired. As for evidence of the power of
memory, what better can we desire than the well-known
fact of the transmission of the Iliad, with its 15,677 lines,
for generations, perhaps for centuries, before it was even
written ? Yet even that is a mere trifle compared with
the transmission of the Vedas. The Rig Veda, with its
1017 hymns, is about four times the length of the Iliad.
That is only a part of the ancient Vedic literature, and
the whole was composed, and fixed, and handed down by
memory, — only, as Max Miiller says, by ' memory kept
under the strictest discipline.' There is still a class of
priests in India who have to know by heart the whole of
the Rig Veda. And there is this curious corroboration
of the fidelity with which this memorizing has been car«
TRUSTWORTHINESS OF EARLY TRADITION. 493
ried on and handed down : that they have kept on trans
mitting in the ancient literal form laws prohibiting prac
tices that have nevertheless become established. Suttee
is now found to be condemned by the Vedas themselves.
This was first pointed out by their European students,
but has since been admitted by the native Sanskrit schol
ars. Nothing could show more clearly the faithfulness
of the traditional memory and transmission. It has, too,
this further bearing on the date of the so-called Mosaic
legislation : it shows that the fact of customs existing in
a country for ages unchallenged does not prove that laws
condemning such customs must necessarily be of later
origin. But there is more that is instructive in the trans
mission of this Vedic literature. There has been writing
in India for twenty-five hundred years now, yet the cus
todians of the Vedic traditions have never trusted to it.
They trust, for the perfect perpetuation and transmission
of the sacred books, to disciplined memory. They have
manuscripts, they have even a printed text, but, says Max
Miiller, ' they do not learn their sacred lore from them.
They learn it, as their ancestors learnt it thousands of
years ago, from the lips of a teacher, so that the Vedic
succession should never be broken.' For eight years in
their youth they are entirely occupied in learning this.
' They learn a few lines every day, repeat them for hours,
so that the whole house resounds with the noise ; and
they thus strengthen their memory to that degree that,
when their apprenticeship is finished, you can open them
like a book, and find any passage you like, any word, any
accent.' And Max Miiller shows, from rules given in
the Vedas themselves, that this oral teaching of them was
carried on, exactly as now, at least as early as 500 B. c.1
"Very much the same was it with those Rabbinical
schools amid which the Talmud gradually grew up. All
of that vast literature, exceeding many times in bulk
1 [See F. Max Muller, Origin and Growth of Religion. New York
edition, pp. 146-161.]
494 APPENDIX.
Homer and the Vedas and the Bible all together, was, at
any rate until its later periods, the growth of oral tradi
tion. It was prose tradition, too, which is the hardest to
remember, and yet it was carried down century after cen
tury in the memory ; and long after it had been all com
mitted to writing, the old memorizing continued in the
schools. Indeed, it has not entirely ceased even now,
for my friend Dr. Gottheil, of New York, tells me that he
has had in his study a man who thus knows the entire
Talmud by heart, and can take it up at any word that is
given him, and go on repeating it syllable by syllable,
with absolute correctness.
" In the presence of such facts, surely we must be pre
pared to revise our ideas of what memory is capable of,
— ideas derived from the very limited uses for which
we usually depend on it now. Such facts show that
memory, consolidated into tradition, is perfectly com
petent at least to act as an accurate instrument for
transmitting along many generations whatever men are
very anxious to have remembered. It is simply a ques
tion of being anxious and of taking special care."
After other interesting and impressive illustrations,
drawn from the history of peoples in the most diverse
states of culture, the writer closes as follows : " If there is
anything in these facts which I have collected they mean
at least this : that we may take up again the discarded
traditions of the old heroic ages, and of the world's morn
ing time, with far more confidence than has been usual of
late years. Homer will be read with a new interest, and
Herodotus, and — best of all — the world-old histories of
the Bible. I know they will not give us detailed narra
tives by which this or that point can be proved, or names
or dates to be learned off as school-boy tasks. But they
will give us glimpses of the ancient days ; pictures here
and there of such men and women as loved and fought in
those old buried cities of Hissarlik, or meditated by the
Ganges, or wandered from Chaldea with Abraham, or
APPENDIX. 495
followed Moses out of the mighty empire of Egypt into
those wild solitudes of Sinai, — pictures of life ; land
marks of great deeds and thoughts and worships and
laws ; a dawn to the history, not of abstract theories, nor
of dazzling sun-myths, but of real peoples and real men."
(Brooke Herford in The Atlantic Monthly for August,
1883.)
INDEX
OF AUTHORS REFERRED TO OR QUOTED.
ADAMS, W. H. D., 248.
Adenez, 19.
Adhemar, A. J., 75.
jEschylus, 271, 353, 355.
Agassiz, Louis, 33, 438.
Albertus Magnus, 305.
Alcaeus, 238.
Allen, Grant, 85.
Altenburg, 469.
Ambrose, Saint, 4.
Ameis, 331, 339, 477.
Ampelius, 31.
Anaxagoras, 191, 192, 196.
Anaximenes, 136, 192.
Andersen, Hans, xii.
Andree, 325.
Anthon, Charles, 352.
Apollodprus, 185, 271.
Apollonius of Tyana, 238.
Aquila, 26.
Aratus, 281.
Archer-Hind, R. D., 451.
Argulf, Bishop, 227.
Argyll, Duke of, 363, 408.
Aristophanes, 355.
Aristotle, 30, 51, 122, 135, 349, 481, 482,
487.
Arnold, Edwin, 271.
Arnold, Matthew, 455.
Bachofen, 393, 394, 432.
Bacon, Francis, 182.
Bailey, P. J., 491.
Bailly, J. S., 116, 194, 244, 303.
Baissac, Jules, 381, 382.
Bancroft, H. H., 116, 229, 247, 260, 350,
358, 482.
Banier, Abbe, 424, 431.
Barclay, J. T., 228.
Baring-Gould, 9, 12, -582.
Barlow, H. C., 308.
Bastian, A., 131, 376.
Baudissin, W., 266.
Bauer, G. L., 369.
Baumgarten, 205.
Beal, Samuel, 133, 137, 184,211,212,260,
272, 487.
Beauvais, John of, 306.
Beauvois, E., 41, 214. 355.
Bellot, A., 490
Bergaine, 118,257, 258,328.
32
Bergel, 207.
Berlioux, 39, 186.
Berosus, 282.
Bevan, W. L., 204.
Birch, S., 484.
Blackie, J. Stuart, 340.
Blandford, W. T., 411.
Bleek, A. H., 208.
Bleek, W. H. J., 200.
Boas, F., 56.
Bceckh, Aug., 213.
Boise, J. R., 456.
Boivin, 344.
Boscawen, 229.
Bouche-Leclercq, A., 214.
Bourgeois, Abbe, 448.
Bowman, Henry, 253.
Bradley, Henry, 29.
Brauns, 245.
Brewer, E. C., 272.
Broca, 376.
Brown, Francis, 26.
Brown, Robt., Jun., 31, 221, 256, 257,
266, 471.
Brugsch-Bey, 124, 129, 173-175, 177-179,
208-210, 224, 265, 266, 357, 484.
Bryant, Jacob, 184, 185, 353.
Buchholz, 117, 334, 34o, 349.
Buchner, F. K. C. L., 293, 294, 432.
Buckle, Henry T., 432.
§uckley, T. A., 334, 343, 344, 47i.
Budde, Karl, 263.
Bunbury, E. H., 117, 328, 335, 349, 470,
477-
Bunsen, Baron von, 125.
Bunsen, Ernst von, 262.
Burgess, E., 131.
Burnet, Thomas, 27, 52, 312.
Burnouf, 38, 133, 142.
Burton, Robert, 270.
Butler, A. J., 308.
Butler, Samuel, 304.
Buttmann, 356.
Buxtorf, 257.
Callimachus, 235.
Calvin, John, 25.
Campbell, Thomas, 202.
Caspari, Otto, 34, 35, 375-382, 389, 39«,
395.5.4"-
Cassini, 360.
498
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
Castre'n, 218, 257.
Cautley, P., 289.
Chabas, 173, 484.
Chamberlain, B. H., 142.
Channing, W. H., 143.
Cheyne, T. K., 204.
Chipiez, Charles, 229.
Clarke, Adam, 205.
Clarke, Jas. Freeman, 453.
Claudian, 281.
Clavigero, 247.
Cleanthes, 136.
Cohn, Ferdinand, 324.
Cole, O. B., 487.
Colebrooke, H. T., 483.
Collignon, Maxime, 237.
Columbus, Christopher, 3-6, 306, 435-
437-
Comestor, 4.
Comte, Auguste, 316, 369, 371, 372, 390,
392-
Conway, 207.
Cook, C. F., 160.
Cope, Edward D., 297, 414.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, 305, 306.
Cox, G. W., 118, 351, 470.
Creuzer, 135, 209, 214, 236.
Croll, 85, 407-
Crosby, Howard, 452.
Curtius, Georg, 266.
Curtius, Quintus, 236.
Daly, C. P., 324-
Dana, J. D., 323.
Dante, 191, 307-309.
Darmesteter, 134, 159-161, 198,208, 243,
251, 252, 258, 264, 280, 318.
Darwin, Charles, 33, 35, 46, 100, no,
294, 297, 326, 387, 391, 395, 404, 411.
Davids, T. W. Rhys, 272.
Davies, John, 269.
Dawkins, W. B., 411.
Dawson, J. W., 87, 90, 102, 296, 321, 415.
De Brosses, 368, 369, 390.
Decharme, 118.
D'Eckstein, 38.
Delitzsch, Franz, 39, 250.
Delitzsch, Fried., 28, 39, 127, 170, 483.
Deluc, 79.
De Maistre, 411.
Depuis, 125, 350, 483.
Dick, Thos., 61.
Dickens, 47.
Diestel, 207.
Dietelmair, 205.
Dillmann, A., 20, 177, 178, 207.
Diodorus Siculus, 163, 235, 236, 238, 486.
Diogenes Laertius, 191, 192.
Dionysius Harlicarn., 231.
Dirghatamas, 242.
Donnelly, Ignatius, 39, 180, 186, 306.
Dorman, 196, 248.
Douglas, R. K., 216, 451.
Dyer, Thistleton, 90.
Edkins, Joseph, 129, 216, 217.
Eggers 477-
Eisenlonr, 477.
Eisenmenger, 145, 199, 209, 344, 357.
Emeric-David, T. B., 235.
Emerson, R. W., 417, 418.
Engler, 39, 90, 287.
Enoch, Book of, 20, 205.
Euripides, 122, 255, 270, 348, 487.
Everett, C. C., 456.
Ewald, Professor, 38, 233.
Faber, G. S., 230.
Faesi, 343, 348, 353.
Falconer, 289.
Falies, Louis, 74.
Farrer, J. A., 395.
Fergusson, James, 270, 271.
Figuier, G. L., 285.
Finzi, F., 28, 39, 169, 264.
Fiske, John, 313, 390, 395, 396, 407.
Flach, H., 335, 480.
Flammarion, 75, 214, 306, 349, 361.
Foerster, 480.
Folkard, Richard, Jr., 277.
Fontane, M., 118, 485.
Fornander, A., 213.
Friedreich, 117.
Fritz, H.,68.
Froschammer, J., 381, 392.
Gaffarel, 186.
Garcia, F. G., 201, 358.
Gardner, J. S., 74, 90.
Garrett, 355, 486.
Gaudry, 448.
Gautier de Metz, 7.
Geddes, W. D., 345, 346, 348.
Geikie, Archibald, 60, 89, 91, 292.
Geikie, James, 74.
Gerland, G. K. C., 469.
Gerok, Karl, 433.
Gibb, John, 162.
Gill, 158, 218.
Gladstone, 331, 33*. 336, 451, 470, 471.
Gobineau, Count, 42.
Goguet, 424.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 377.
Gottheil, 494.
Gottling, 324.
Grassmann, 211, 241, 244, 258, 357.
Gratacap, 298.
Gray, Asa, 88, 90, 287, 288.
Gray, Geo. Z., 457.
Griffis, W. E., 141, 145, 165, 245.
Griffiths, 149, 242.
Grill, Julius, 28-30, 43, 161, 250, 256-
258, 268, 269, 465-467.
Grimm, Jakob, 207, 217, 273.
Gubernatis, Angelo de, 273, 466.
Guigniaut, 135, 209, 214, 486.
Giinther, S., 310.
Hackel, E-, 35, 296, 305, 326, 376, 407.
Haliburton, R. G., 240.
Hall, Capt., 83.
Hamy, 443.
Hardy, Spence, 131.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
499
Harkness, 297.
Hartung, J. A., 341.
Haug, Martin, 134, 158, 198, 208, 251,
252, 268, 269, 280.
Haughton, Samuel, 91.
Hayman, Henry, 472.
Hecatasus, 238, 270.
5Gfu' 7Vx/73' 87~9°' 96> 491'
Helbig, W., 329.
Henderson, W., 232.
Hennessy, 323.
Hentze, 339, 477.
Heraclitus, 257.
Herbinius, J., 337.
Herford, Brooke, 492-495.
Herodotus, 136, 182, 300, 471.
Herschel, 305.
Hershon, 234.
Herzog, 26.
Hesiod, 255, 270. 281, 342, 345, 35°. 35',
353-
Hbfer, 38.
Hoffmann, 359.
Homer, 30, 31, 117-122, 134, 172, 184,
213, 236, 238, 254, 281, 319, 328-361,
429, 4687487.
Hooker, Sir Joseph, 88-91, 296, 324.
Huet, Bishop, 23.
Humboldt, 60, 238, 276.
Hume, David, 364-369, 377, 384, 392.
Husson, M., 276.
Huxley, T. H., 376.
Hyde, A. B., 457.
Hygmus, 31, 195.
Ideler, 252, 256.
Ihne, 348.
Isaiah, 225.
Isidore, Saint, 4.
ohnson, Samuel, 143, 251.
oily, Julius, 199.
onnes, Moreau de, 238, 300.
ordan, W., 468, 477.
osephus, 30, 221, 360, 421.
ubainville, H. d'Arbois de, 276.
usti, 156, 254, 268.
ustinus, 186.
uvenal, 281.
Kammer, 477.
Keary, C. F., 19, 156, 238, 276,327, 328,
468, 486.
Keerl, 85, 128, 247.
Keightley, Thomas, 329, 330, 334, 339,
340,345:347.483.
Kern, Heinnch, 211.
Kinn, Samuel, 64.
Kjellman, 321.
Klaproth, J., 42.
Klee, Frederik, 71, 80, 193, 194, 197, 244,
246.
Klopstock, 84.
Knox, Thos. W., 490.
Koeppen, C. F., 131, 175, 229.
Kracher, 35.
Krichenbauer, Anton, 200, 360.
Kuenen, 422, 492.
Kuhn, A., 246, 268-271, 273.
Kuntze, J. H., 215, 231, 392.
Kuntze, Otto, 39, 59, 88, 92.
Lacouperie, Terrien de, 222.
Lactantius, 281.
Lang, A., 372, 397.
Langlois, 467.
Lanman, C. R., 452.
Lartet, Louis, 293.
Lassen, 38, 153.
Latini, Brunette, 309.
Lauer, J. F., 172, 331.
Lawrence, R., 21.
Le Conte, 95.
Lefevre, 173, 484.
Legge, James, 142, 216.
Leibnitz, 79, 80.
Lemaire, 236.
Lemstrbm, 68.
Lenormant, Francois, 27, 28, 30, 38, 123,
126, 127, 134, 148, 151, 157, 161, 163,
165-171, 183, 186, 204, 220, 231, 233,
237, 240, 256, 262, 264, 266, 267, 282-
284, 363, 421, 483, 486.
Lepsius, 200.
Letronne, 192.
Lichtenberg, 26.
Lieblein, 173, 484.
Lillie, A., 154, 175, 211, 229, 271.
Livingstone, David, 22, 399.
Loomis, Elias, 68.
Loven, Sven, 320.
Lubbock, Sir John, 292, 372-375, 377,
385, 388, 392, 393, 399, 401, 402.
Liicken, H., 143, 144, 185, 238, 246, 247,
260, 271, 274, 279, 312, 487.
Lucretius, 281, 377.
Ludwig, 241, 355, 357.
Luther, Martin, 25, 304.
Lutwin, 250.
Lyell, Sir Charles, 35, 60, 86, 89, 201, 286,
296, 407, 413.
Maedler, 195.
Magnusen, Finn, 273.
Maine, Sir H. S., 383.
Major, R. H., 9, 437.
Mallet, 217, 256.
Man, E. H., 396.
Manetho, 283.
Manilius, 31.
Mannhardt, W., 409, 411, 485.
Mariette-Bey, A. E., 265.
Marinelli, G., 307.
Mason, 482.
Maspero, 38, 174, 178, 223, 484, 485.
Massey, G.,24, 29, 42, 125, 126, 154, 171,
172, 177, 220, 222, 250, 259, 263, 265,
270, 272, 276.
Matthews, W., 201, 275.
Maundeville, 2, 7, 9, 223, 227, 260.
Maury, L. J. A., 267, 335, 483.
Maury, Matthew F., 325.
500
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
McClintqck and Strong, 23, 25, 204, 250.
McCormick, R., 322.
McLennan, D., 393.
McLennan, J. F., 393-397, 411.
Menard, Joachim, 168.
Menzel, W., 135, 145, 146, 158, 167, 187,
202, 207, 223, 264, 270, 276, 480, 483.
Merrill, Selah, 226.
Merriman, Mansfield, 323.
Merry, 352, 353.
Metchnikoff, Le"on, 141.
Michelant, 228, 232.
Middendorff, von, 297, 298.
Middleton, Popsey, 485.
Mill, J. S., 46, 50, 316.
Miller, O. D., 30, 145, 163, 171, 210,229,
230.
Milton, John, 196, 197.
Moerenhout, 401.
Moffat, J. C., 432.
Montfaucon, 306.
Moreno, F. P., 91.
Morris, Lewis, 487.
Mortillet, 84, 372, 407, 411.
Morton, S. G., 33.
Moseley, H. N.,32o.
Moses, 82, 287, 432.
Mousket, Ph., 232.
Movers, 212.
Muir, W 149, 153, 355, 482, 483.
Muller, iTiedncn, 100.
Miiller, F. Max, 247, 370-372, 376, 423,
455,46i,492,493.
Muller, K.O., 214,352.
Murchison, Sir R., 21.
Murray, John, 232.
Nadaillac, 85, 185, 297.
Naville, 179.
Newcomb, Simon, 117.
Newman, J. P., 21.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 81, 82.
Nicholson, Alleyne, 285, 286, 288-291,
295-
Niebuhr, 214.
Nitzsch, G. W.,477.
Noeldeke, Theodor, 40.
Noire, 376, 395.
Nonnos, 237, 271.
Nordenskjold, 63, 71, 73, 297-299, 491.
Nott and Ghddon, 33.
Novo y Colson, Pedro de, 186.
Obry, 12, 28, 30, 38, 230, 269, 486.
Ongen, 234.
Orton, James, 94.
Ovid, 280, 282.
Packard, A. S., 95,320.
Packard, L. R., 352, 450.
Packard, W. A!, 453
Palaifatos, 200.
Paley F. A., 118,324,342,356.
Pastellus, 48.
Paterson, J. D., 185.
Pauly, 342.
Pausanius, 30, 174, 234.
| Payer, Lieut., 62.
Peabody, A. P., 456.
Peet, S. D., 453.
Penka, Karl, 162.
Penn, Granville, 28.
Perrot, G., 229.
Perry, E. D., 257.
Peschel, O., 34, 35, 276, 376.
Petromus, 377.
Pfau, 342.
Pherecydes, 187, 266, 267, 271, 355.
Philo, 23.
Philo of Byblos, 187, 326.
Pictet, A., 341.
Pierret, 219.
Pietrement, 161, 280.
Pirn, Capt. Bedford, 64.
Pinches, T. G., 169, 222.
Pindar, 22, 145, 185, 234, 238, 300.
Piper, Ferdinand, 232, 273.
Plato, 145, 158, 160, 181, 184, 195, 213,
225, 238, 256, 279, 281, 282, 297, 350,
419, 422, 424-432.
Pliny, 28, 136, 297.
Ploix, Ch. , 328.
Plutarch, 20, 182, 209.
Poole, Matthew, 205.
Poole, R. S., 484.
Porphyrius, 478.
Post, Edwin, 456.
Pougens, C., 97.
Powell, 158.
Preller, L., 182, 256, 271, 342, 350-352,
355, 467, 476, 477-
Pressel, E., 25.
Pressense, Eduard de, 312, 362.
Pritchard, 376.
Proctor, Richard A., 193.
Pythagoras, 193.
Quatrefages, 34, 36, 97, 98, 375, 385.
Rafinesque, 161.
Rambosson, 60.
Rau,C.,4o8.
Rawlinson, Geo., 155, 300.
Reclus, E., 408.
Reed, Sir Edward J., 140, 215.
Regell, 213.
Rein, J. J., 246.
Renan, E., 38, 183.
Renouf, P. Le Page, 210, 265, 266.
Reville, A., 263, 275, 358, 386.
Reynaud, 228, 232.
Rhode, 160.
Riddell, 352, 353.
Rinck, W. F., 270, 341, 468.
Ritter, Carl, 133, 154,244.
Rive, M. de la, 68.
Robiou, Felix, 470.
Rochas, A. de, 407.
Ronchaud, Louis de, 267.
Roskoff, 386.
Rosny, Le"on de, 140, 215.
Saswulf, Bishop, 227.
Saint Vincent, Bory de, 186.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
501
Sale, 155.
Sanchoniathon, 187.
Saporta, Marquis de, 56, 57, 88, go, 93,
97, 99, 416, 437~449i 491-
Sayce, A. H., 31, 127, 212, 240, 257, 264,
389, 451, 485-
Schafer, H. W., 481-
Schaff, Philip, 26.
Scheube, B., 129.
Schiefner, Anton, 218, 276.
Schlegel, A. W. von, 362.
Schlegel, F. von, 312.
Schlegel, G., 216, 356.
Schliemann, H., 360.
Schoemann, G. F., 353.
Schoolcraft, H. R., 248.
Schrader, O., 161.
Schroeder, Carl, 13, 261, 276.
Schroeder, L. von, 193.
Schubeler, 321.
Schulthess, 145.
Schwartz, W., 246, 267.
Scribner, J. Hilton, 103, 224.
Scudder, 459.
Senart, 38, 269, 271.
Servius, 213.
Shome, 460.
" Siddartha,'; 277, 278.
Siebold, H. von, 245.
Simonin, 34.
Siouffi, 171, 210, 259.
Skelton, Alexander, 303.
Smith, George, 126, 169, 240, 257.
Socrates, 239.
Southall, 407.
Spencer, Herbert, 212, 387,390, 391,394,
396, 405, 411, 482.
Spiegel, F., 133, 155, 198, 254, 268.
Spiller, Philip, 59.
Stanley, W. F., 82.
Stedman, Edmund C., 313.
Steen, A. S., 68.
Stehelin, 209.
Stephanus, 183.
Sterrett, 480.
Stillmann, W. J., 359.
Stockwell, G. A., 3 14
Stollberg, 128.
Stone, C. J., 161.
Strabo the geographer, 187.
Strabus, Walafried, 4.
Stuart, Villiers, 172, 176, 486.
St. Victor, Hugo de, 7.
Suidas, 200.
Surius, Bernard, 227.
Synimachus, 26.
Symmes, 84.
Talbot, Fox, 471.
Taylor, 136, 174.
Tennyson, 47.
Thales, 193.
Thayer, J. Henry, 453.
Theodotion, 26.
Theopompus, 185.
Thiersant, Dabry de, 201, 248.
Thompson, J. P., 484.
Thomson, Sir Wm., 77.
Thorpe, Benjamin, 273.
Tiele, C. P., 155, 168, 265, 370, 452, 483-
485.
Todd, J. E., 77.
Topinard, 297, 376.
Trouessart, M. E. L., 91.
Turner, George, 276.
Twisden, J. F., 195.
Tyler, W.S., 452.
Tylor, E. B., 160,260, 319, 374, 400,401,
407, 408, 422.
Tyrius, Maximus, 136.
Ukert, 117.
Unger, 39, 186, 305.
Van Vleck, J. M., 66.
Varro, 214.
Vergil, 83, 117, 182, 281, 487.
Vernon, G. G. Warren, Lord, 309.
Vigfusson, 158.
Virchow, R., 409.
Vogt, Carl, 294, 411, 438.
Volcker, K. H. W., 3, 256, 271, 333, 33&,
340-342, 344, 346, 347, 349, 355, 467,
47!7473, 476, 478. 48o.
Voltaire, 369.
Voss, J. H., n7, 349, 476, 480.
Wagner, Moritz, 100.
Waitz, 376.
Wallace, A. R. , 72, 83, 86, 91, 93, 95, 411.
Waring, J. B., 179.
Weber, A., 153, 269.
Welcker, F. G., 236, 256, 353, 354.
Wellhausen, 422.
West, E. W., 134, 157, 160, 196, 243, 252.
Wetzer and Welte, 23, 26.
Whitney, J. D., 287.
Whitney, W. D., 452.
Wilford, 38, 129, 137, 153, 164, 229, 236,
461, 464.
Wilkins, Walter, 179, t8o.
Wilkins, W. J., 149, 258.
Wilkinson, Sir Gardiner, 180, 266.
Williams, Monier, 149, 483.
Wilson, Andrew, 413, 414.
Wilson, Daniel, 67.
Wilson, H. H., 241, 259, 464.
Winchell, Alex., 34, 35, 58, 76, 80, 99.
Windischtnann, 158, 160, 196, 252, 253,
258, 268, 269.
Winslow, C. F., 80, 195.
Witt, C, 237.
Witte, 308.
Wolf, F. A., 476.
Wolff, M., 269.
Wright, G. F., 411.
Wright, Thos., 223, 227.
Wright, W. A., 32.
Yule, Col. H., 273.
Zaborowski, 98.
Zenophanes, 193.
Zimmer, Heinrich, 118, 149.
Zoeckler, 35, 180.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
ABODE of the Dead, Homer's, 332, 467-
487-
Adam, Book of, 177; Adam's Peak, 9;
Adam, where buried, 232.
./Esars, Etruscan diviuities, 214.
./Esir, Scandinavian divinities, 217.
Africa, Eden located in, 4, 22, 42.
Aiaie, location of, 332 ; purpose of, 331.
Akkadian cosmology, 126, 127, 163-171,
264, 483 ; mythology, 31, 171, 257, 264.
Akkads, two, 168.
Algae of the Arctic Ocean, 321, 322.
Al Sirat, 155.
Ame-np-mi-naka-nushi-no-kami, 215.
Amend, Egyptian Abode of the Dead,
173, 176, 177, 209, 266, 485, 486.
America, Eden located in, 41, 42 ; peo
pling of, 38, 56.
Ancient literature, study of, 326-361.
Anthropology, paleontological, 48, 97-
113-
Ape theory of the origin of man, 447-
449-
Apples of Paradise, 17, 276.
Armenia, 24, 25.
Assembly, Mount of the, 127, 128, 143,
171.
Astronomy, antediluvian, 67, 193, 214,
360.
Atlantis, 38, 181, 184-186.
Atlantosaurus, the, 293.
Atlas, 135, 136, 185, 212, 218, 236, 256,
350-358.
Aurora Borealis, 51, 62-70.
Avalon, apples of, 17, 276 ; loadstone
castle of, 15, 276.
Avatha, throne of, 259.
Azacol, world-pillar of the Sunis, 358.
Aztec cosmology, 247, 350.
Bathybius theory, 320.
Bifrost, 155, 158.
Biology, the study of, 313-325.
Boat, spherical, symbol of the Earth,
164-166.
Bodhi Tree, the, 271.
Botany, paleontological, 48, 87-92.
Brain-tree, the, 27^7.
Brandan, Saint, visits Paradise, 13.
Bridge of the Gods. See Bridge of
Souls.
Bridge of Heaven, 140, 141.
Bridge of Souls, 141, 144, 145, 155-158,
270, 272, 275.
Britain nearer Heaven than Southern
Europe, 214.
Buataranga, 157.
Buddhist cosmology, 131-133, 211; Bud
dhist Paradise, 12, 132.
Bushmen, ideas of the, 200.
Calvary, mounts commemorative of, 12,
228.
Calvin on location of Eden, 25.
Calypso's Isle, 235, 236.
Cannibalism, philosophy of its origin,
379-
Carson foot-prints, 297.
Catagenesis, 414.
Centre of the Earth. See Navel of the
Eartk.
Centre of Heaven, 146, 202-224, 252.
Ceylon, Paradise in, 9, 12.
Cher-nuter(Karneter), 173, 485.,
Chinvat Bridge, the, 155-158.
Chronometry of the anthropologists, 411.
Chug of the Earth, the, 225,
Chug of Heaven, the, 202.
Churning of the Ocean, 357, 466.
Circle, the quartered, 179-181, 247.
City of Sakra, 132.
Climatology, prehistoric, 48, 83-86.
Clouds in mythology, 254, 265, 266.
Columbus on ascent to Eden, 3-6 ; form
of his Earth, 4, 306, 307, 435.
" Compas," the, 227.
Cone-shaped, the Earth, 136, 306, 307.
Continents built up from North to South,
94; their configuration, 106, 439, 440.
Contrasts of the two polar regions, 91,
Cosmas Indicopleustes, his geography,
305-
Cosmology, Ancient, 117-141, 143 ; " True
Key" to, 117-123, 450-458.
Cradle of the Akkadians, 169, 171; of
the Aryans, 39, 161, 162 ; of the Shem«
ites, 39.
Creation from North to South, 248.
Cuneiform inscriptions, 27.
Cup, the solar, 329, 330.
Cyclops, myth of the, 327, 429.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
503
Damaras, their rain-giver, 260.
Dante's cosmology, 307, 308.
Darkness, duration of, at the Pole, 62-70.
Darwinistic speculations, 35, 110-112,
326, 327, 362-418, 447-449-
Daylight at the Pole, 62-70, 197-201.
Deathless Land, 10.
Declination of the Pole, 192-196, 247-
Deep-sea research, 320.
Degeneracy of mankind, 281-284.
Delphi, 234, 235, 237, 238.
Deluge, the, 4, 24, 25, 47, 194-19°. 2S8>
274, 298, 424-431 ; theory of, 75~82-
" Devil's Door," the, in churches, 207.
Difficulties of our hypothesis, 54, 300,
301.
Directors, the seven, 142.
Dispersion of mankind, 35, 437-450.
Doves of Zeus, 237.
Draco, 125, 175, 356.
Dragon, guard of Paradise, u, 17, 125,
et passim.
Early types of life normal, 294-296.
Earth, cooling of the, 59-61, 79, 84, 100,
103-114.
Earth of the Akkadians, 126, 163-171 ;
of Columbus, 306, 435 ; of the Egyp
tians, 124, 172-181; of the _ Hindus,
150-156, 459-464 ; of the Iranians, 157-
162 ; of the Japanese, 142 ; of the
Greeks, 182-1^7, 328-359-
East, the Garden eastward, 26, 27, 219-
224.
Eden, the Centre of the World, 234 ; the
highest point of the Earth, 5, 6, 8.
See Summit of the World.
Egg of the world, 31, 484.
Egg-hatching at opposite poles, 324.
Eggs, fourteen inches in diameter, 292.
Egyptian cosmology, 124, 172-181, 207,
265.
Eirek visits Paradise, 10-12.
El, 202, 402.
Electricity, the polar, 68, 253, 314, 322.
Emlak, name of India, 8.
Ends of the Earth, or World, 160, 174,
241, 242.
Enoch, 15; Book of, 20.
Er, the story of, 145.
Ethnology, 48, 97-991 110-112.
Etruscans' sacred quarter, 214.
Euphrates, the historic, 28, 251 ; the pre
historic, 29; as Ocean-river, 30, 72,
171, 259.
Fall of man from primitive family form,
397-
Fathers of the Church, .23, 27, 278.
Fetichism not the primitive form of relig
ion, 368-406.
Finnic ideas, 218, 276.
Fire drill, 380, 385.
Flamens, 380.
Flaming sword, the torrid zone, 24.
Fountain of Paradise, 8, 9. See Rivers
Of Parodist.
Geogony, scientific, 48, 59-61.
Geography, astronomical, 48, 60-70;
mythical, 117-141.
Geology, testimony of, 71-82.
Germination as affected by positive and
negative poles, 324.
Glacial Age, 75, 82, 84, 95, 100, 105-113,
161, 280, 296, 298, 304, 421, 445.
Golden Race, the, 281, 405, 407.
Gonds, their view of Hades and Heaven,
211.
Greely, rescue of Lieut., 488, 491.
Hades. See Abode of the Dead.
Heart of Earth, 246.
Heart of Heaven, 246.
Heavens of Kedem heavens, Ps. Ixviii.
34. See Kedem.
Heimdallr, 158.^
Hell, the Rabbinical, 199.
Higher and lower organisms, 295.
Highest part of the Earth. See Summit.
Hissarlik, 494.
Hlidskjalf, 217,218.
Holy Sepulchre, Church of the, 226, 248.
Homeric cosmology, 117-122, 328-361,
467-487-
Homer s year-day, 200.
Homo alalus, 326; homo Darwinius,326;
homo despiciens, 327.
Horn of the World, 124, 126, 166, 174, 176.
Hyperboreans, the, 22, 184, 185, 214, 237,
238, 355. 403-
Ice Age. See Glacial Age.
Ida, Mount, 182, 232, 235, 256.
Inverted World of Hades, 125, 467-487.
Iran, the Ancient, 156-162,280.
Irmensul, the, 273, 358.
Island of the Congealed Drop, 141.
Island, the White, of great Zeus, 182.
Ivory, fossil, of the North, 297, 298.
Izanagi's Spear of Jade, 140.
Izdhubar, Epic of, 239.
Jambu, the tree of, 148, 153.
Japanese cosmogony, 140; other ideas,
140, 141, 215, 245-
Jerusalem, its earth-navel, 225-234, 248.
Job's view of the North, 205, 217.
Jordan, the river, 138.
Judge of Heaven, 158, 217.
Kedem, Qedem, Miqqedem, 26, 27, 218-
224 (see the Heb. Bible), 421.
Keltic Paradise, 12.
Keshvares of the Iranians, 155-160.
Kharsak Kurra, 126, 163-171.
Khorda Avesta, 28.
Kronos, Mount of, 231 ; reign of, 187.
Ladder of Paradise, n, 144. J45> 1S5"
158, 270, 272, 275.
Lalitavistara, 211.
Lance, the shadowless, 135.
Lemuria, the hypothetic, 35, 306, 386.
Let6, birthplace of, 238.
504
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
Libations to the blessed dead, 244.
Life, exuberance of, 279-299; origin of,
87-1 '3> 317-325-
Lingam, 401.
Link, the missing, no.
Literature, ancient, study of, 326-361.
Livingstone, David, in search of Eden,
22.
Loadstone rock or castle, the magnetic
Pole, 14, 15, 16, 276. Also Tylor's
Primitive Culture.
Lost arts in Homer's day, 329.
Luther on location of Eden, 25, 304.
Lycopods, size of antediluvian, 285.
Macrobii, 403.
Magnetism, terrestrial, 52, 68, 253, 314.
Mahabharata, the, cited, 186, 319, 482.
Man-beast, Caspari's, 378, 379.
Mankind, Origin of, 33-43, 110-112,437-
449-
Man's power over Nature, 314, 416-418.
Mediaeval cosmography, 305-309.
Mediaeval ideas of Paradise, 13, 308.
Memory, power of, 492-494.
Meroe, 236.
Meropes, 183.
Meru, mount of the gods, 42, 129, 148,
150, 154, 229, 259, 275, 461, 462.
Mesopotamia, Eden not in, 27-31.
Mexican Paradise, 260 ; earth-navel, 247.
Milky Way, the, 156, 269, 479.
Miqqedem. See Kedem.
Mixteque cosmogony, 201, 358.
Moon's orbit and Paradise, 8, 24, 258,
259, 3°4-
Morgue la Fe*e, 15-19.
Mother-region of plants, 87-92 ; of ani
mals, 93-96; of men, 97-101, 437-449.
Mountain of the World, 122-137.
Movement of the sun, 329—332.
Mystery and charm of the Arctic regions,
325-
Myth, Eden story a, 25, 26.
Mythology, comparative, 48, et passim.
Myths of the Greeks, origin, 326.
Naga, 260.
" Nail " of the old astronomers, 175.
Navel of heaven, 202-218.
Navel of the Earth, 51, 146, 147, 153,
154, 157, 168, 170, 180, 187, 225-249,
335) 350, 354-
Nebular Hypothesis, the, 59.
Night and day, one year, 50, 197-201.
Night skies of Eden, 68.
Nipple of the Earth, 42, 307, 435, 436.
North, Avalon in the, 12 ; highest part
of the world, 122, 151, 153, 168, 204;
nearest the sky, 187, 214, 247; the
sacred quarter, 202,218; "where God
dolh work," 205, 217.
Northern Light. See Aurora Borealis.
Nysa, 145, 172, 202, 480.
Ocean in the Veda, 328.
Odyssey, true idea of the, 122.
Oger visits Paradise, 13-19
Ogygia, 236, 335, 336, 359.
Olympos, 212, 338-350.
Omphalos of the Earth. See Navel of
the Earth.
Origin of mankind. See Mankind.
Palm, the holy, 270.
Pamir, the plateau of, 36.
Paradise, celestial, 9, 24; terrestrial, 3-
22 ; the two connected by the world-
pillar, 145, 146 ; a mountain, 4, 8, 24,
etc. ; how connected with the moon,
8, 24, 258, 304; inaccessible, 2, 4, 7,
22, 432 ; its restoration promised, 458 ;
wall of, 7, 8,178.
Patriarchal system, 393, 424-431 ; Church,
4.32.
Pelion upon Ossa, 339, 341.
Peplos of Harmonia, 266.
Persea, the sacred, 266.
Phallic worship, 381, 401.
Philolaos, cosmos of, 212.
Philology, supposed evidence of, 37.
Phoenician mountain of the gods, 212.
Physics, terrestrial, 57-82, 313-325.
Polar research, latest, 487-491.
Pole, immovable, 195.
Pole, the magnetic, 14, 16.
Pole star, 125, 146, 171, 192,216, 217.
Pole stars, two, 130.
Polocentric maps, 154, 159; zones, 95,
106.
Polyptych Olympos, 349, 350. _
Polytheism, the primary religion accord
ing to Hume, 364-368.
Posture in prayer, 129, 202-218, 303.
Prester John's kingdom, 8.
Primitive monotheism, 362-406.
Puranic geography, 148-154, 240.
Pyramids of Egypt, 209, 215.
Qereb of the Earth, Ps. Ixxiv. 12. See
Navel of the Earth.
euadrifurcate River, the, 51. 250-260.
uarter, the sacred, 51, 202-224.
Rainbow, 155, 156, 158, 269.
Ramayana, ideas of the, 149, 480.
Raphael, the Angel, 20.
Reed, the cosmic, 275, 355.
Refrigeration ojt the Earth, 59.
Religionless tribes unknown, 375, 385.
Revelation, primitive, 404, 405.
Rig Veda, 210, 211, 241, 242, 243.
Rishis, the seven, 153, 190, 209, 211.
River in the air, 52, 250-261.
River of Death, 31.
River of Life, 31, 152, 153.
Rivers of Paradise, 3, 8, 24, 27, 39, 51,
52, 127, 128, 130, 133, 134, 136, 1441
152, 171, 179, 186, 250-261.
Rivers of the Underworld, 31, 255.
Roof-pillar, Earth's axis as, 140, 265.
Root of the World, 165.
Rope of the World, 31.
Ru, the Polynesian Atlas, 158.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
505
Sabseans, views of the, 171, 210, 259.
Sandalfon, the Talmudic Atlas, 356, 357.
Satan, how located in the North, 207.
Savagery not primitive, 386-392, 423.
Sequoia, the, of Arctic origin, 285-288.
Set, the Egyptian god, 209.
Shadowless Lance, 135.
Shamanism, 373, 380.
Sheol, See A bode of tJte Dead.
Simian origin of man, 447-449.
Sion, the Hill of, 138, 144, 145, 232, 308,
309.
Sipara, the polar, 177, 421.
Siriad, 421.
Skambha, the World-pillar, 465-467.
Son of nine mothers, 158.
South Pole, associations, 120, 176, 205,
206, 211,482-486.
South, sunrise in the, 197.
Southward spread of population, 56, 97-
113, 116, 280, et passim.
Spear of Izanagi, 140.
Spindle of Necessity, Plato's, 358.
Spine of the Earth, the, 357.
Splinter, the golden, 358.
Stars, motion of, at the Pole, 50, 191-
196.
Stature of the gods, 319, 349.
Summit of the world, 7, 8, 24, 42, 50,
123-137, 154, 167, 173, 174, 187, 202-
218, 247.
Sun -myths, 403, 495.
Sun under the sea, 337.
Sun, the City of, 70, 177.
Sunrise sixteen days too soon, 63.
Swastika, 180.
Symbolical Geography, 30, 225-248.
" Symmes' Hole," 84.
Taivahan Napanen, 218.
Ta nuter, 173, 208.
Tat-pillar, 173, 265.
Telegonos, 332.
Thumbling, the disembodied soul, a, 319.
Titanosaurus, one hundred feet long,
292.
Tomochichi's theology, 399.
Tong tree, 274.
Totemism, 373.
Tower of Kronos, 145, 358 ; of Para
dise, ii.
Tradition, trustworthiness of, 201, 422,
492-495.
Tree of Life, 3, 7, 30, 144, 148, 154, 243,
257, 262-278 ; of Wisdom, 1 1, 262, 271 ;
of the World, 172, 173, 262-278.
Troubadour poetry, 13-19.
" True Key, reception of, 450-458.
Twilight, three months, 61 ; variable
(compare S. Alexander in Johnson's
Cyclopaedia, vol. iv., p. 989), 69.
Ukko, Supreme God of the Finns, 218,
256.
Umbilicus of the Earth, See Navel of
the Earth.
Unity of the human race, 33.
Van, Lake, Paradise in, 24.
Varieties of the human race, 33, 34, 439.
Varshas of the Hindu Earth, 150-152-
Venezuela, 7.
Volkerpsychologie, 376.
" Where did Life begin ?^" 103, 224.
Wind-harp of King David, 207.
Winds, North and South, 177, 178, 207,
266, 483.
World of the ancients, 117-138; of Ho
mer, 479.
World -pillar, see Atlas; World -tree,
262-278, 465-467.
World, the, suspended from a mountain-
top, 346.
Year, a day and a night, 50, 197-201.
Yggdrasil, 217, 262-278, 466.
Yosemite trees, 287.
Youth renewed, 9, 18.
Zion, 138, 230, 259.
Zoology, paleontological, 48, 93-96.
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